394: Lessons from the Stoics. Discipline, Leadership, Life. With Ryan Holiday.

>Join Jocko UNDERGROUND< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Ryan Holiday is the bestselling author of Trust Me, I’m Lying; The Obstacle Is the Way; Ego Is the Enemy; Conspiracy and other books about marketing, culture, and the human condition. His work has been translated into over 30 languages and has appeared everywhere from the New York Times to Fast Company. His company, Brass Check, has advised companies such as Google, TASER, and Complex, as well as multiplatinum musicians and some of the biggest authors in the world. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 394 with Kerry Helton and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening Kerry. Good evening. Self-discipline, the virtue of temperance is the ability to keep your ass in line. The ability to work hard, to say no, to practice good habits and set boundaries, to train and to prepare, to ignore temptations and provocations, to keep your emotions in check, to endure painful difficulties.

• 0:33Jocko Willink?

  Self-discipline is giving you everything you have and knowing what to hold back.

• 0:41Jocko Willink?

  Is there some contradiction in this? No, only balance. Some things we resist, some things we pursue, in all things we proceed with moderation intentionally, reasonably, without being consumed or carried away.

• 0:58Jocko Willink?

  Temperance is not deprivation, but command of oneself physically, mentally, spiritually, demanding the best for oneself and of oneself, even when no one is looking, even when allowed less. It takes courage to live this way, not just because it's hard, but because it sets you apart.

• 1:21Jocko Willink?

  Discipline then is both predictive and deterministic. It makes it more likely you'll be successful and ensures success or failure that whatever happens, you are great.

• 1:38Jocko Willink?

  The converse is also true. A lack of discipline puts you in danger. It also colors who and what you are.

• 1:51Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is a little excerpt from a book called Discipline is Destiny. I feel like I have to say it that way. The Power of Self-Control, written by a gentleman by the name of Ryan Holiday. Ryan Holiday is a prolific author, and I don't use that term lightly. He's a podcaster, a blogger, a marketer, a bookstore owner, an entrepreneur, and a modern day follower of Stoicism. And it's a pleasure to have Ryan here with us tonight to share his experiences and lessons learned along the way. Ryan, thank you for joining us.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks for having me.

• 2:30Jocko Willink?

  It's been an interesting ride for you.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34Jocko Willink?

  As I kind of pulled the thread on your life and what you've done, it's, it's, it's an interesting ride, to say the least.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  You know, that was actually advice someone gave me. I wanted to be a writer and they said, okay, writers live interesting lives. The, the point being, you can go train, you can go to the Iowa's Writers Workshop and get really good at putting the words in the right order, or you can go do stuff and read about stuff and experience stuff and then, you know, write about that. And, and you don't have to be as good.

• 3:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, I would definitely say, I guess I'm a living proof of just go out and do some cool stuff and then write about it. You, you probably do okay.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:16Jocko Willink?

  I would definitely recommend that course of action rather than going to a long schooling. Look, and I went to school. I was an English major. Did I learn stuff? Yes, I absolutely did. But I would, I would much more recommend going out and getting after it. Go out and have adventures, get into trouble, cause issues, cause mayhem. Let there be mayhem in the world around you and you'll have some exciting stuff to write about.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, or just, yeah, see people fuck up, fuck up yourself. Just, just learn something about the human experience that can then like color the work that you're doing.

• 3:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Because if you don't, yeah, you have to be way better. It's like, it's like with music, like you can be the most technically brilliant person, or you can have some sort of emotional experience that you are communicating. And, and I think all the best music is that.

• 4:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure. That's a whole thing for me. Uh, you know, I always give the example that you can go to Guitar Center.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:16Jocko Willink?

  Anywhere in the country and put up a sign that says, hey, I'm looking for a guitarist that can play all of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Rush, which is the most complex music there is, Rush. And, and you'll get 20 applicants that can legitimately do it. And they all have jobs as, you know, waiters and construction workers. And then there's one kid that has this streak of chaos in his brain and what he's been through in his life. And he's got some emotional connection with the world or disconnection with the world. And it comes out. And there you go. You're like, oh, Jack White, how you doing?

• 4:52Speaker 01

  I mean, Inve Malmsteen is a brilliant guitar player, but like, I don't know any of his songs. Uh, I mean, I've seen him live. It was pretty cool. But again, I don't know any of the songs. And there's a, there's a balance, right? There's a spectrum and you could, so you can be technically brilliant. You can just have a lot to say. Ideally, you want, you know, temper. The funny thing is temperance, the stoic virtue is also rendered as sort of moderation or balance. You want both. It's right in the middle that you, you need the combination of the two.

• 5:20Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna try not to do this all day, but I also wrote a book called The Dichotomy of Leadership, and it's all about the balances of everything that you do in life. And if you're, hey, ego's bad, but if you have no ego, then you're just sitting around, you know, watching Netflix and doing nothing. And if you let your ego get out of control, obviously, we know that's a problem too. So, yeah, the, the idea of balance, 100%. And that does include being a rock and roll guitarist. Although you could take the Sex Pistols, and you could probably say they were as about as raw. I mean, Sid Vicious on bass, he, he basically learned how to play the bass, you know, three shows before or whatever, and got up there and just hammered all that thing. So.

• 6:03Jocko Willink?

  They brought it.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And, and, and just like there's brilliant technical guitarists too, right? So, but I think the best, it's the, you know, the gold, you know, the golden mean? Aristotle's golden mean?

• 6:13Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  So Aristotle's golden mean is basically this argument, right? He's saying that, okay, um, he actually says courage. So the, the four virtues, courage, discipline, justice, wisdom. He's saying that courage actually illustrates the, the virtue of discipline because courage is not on one end of the spectrum. Courage is in the middle of the spectrum. There's recklessness and then cowardice on the ends of the spectrum. And the virtue, the thing you want to be is actually in the middle. And pretty much everything in life is like that. It's in, it's in the middle because there's always an extreme version that's too much.

• 6:48Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  Most people don't have the too much problem. They're not too good at their thing. Most people are not good enough at their thing or don't have enough of the thing. But actually you want that middle ground. So even 2000 years ago, they're like, more than 2000 years, they're like, hey, look, it's a balance. It's a balance.

• 7:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure. All right. So let's go, let's go through where, how you ended up here today. How did you get here today? Uh, where were you born?

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Sacramento, California.

• 7:14Jocko Willink?

  Sacto.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:15Jocko Willink?

  Sactown.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:17Jocko Willink?

  And what did your parents do?

• 7:18Speaker 01

  My dad was a police detective and then he worked in the EOD unit. And then my mom was a school principal or vice principal. So very sort of blue collar, regular people jobs as pretty much everyone in Sacramento is. I think people think California is all this and it's, it's much more sacra, it's much more Sacramento than the other place.

• 7:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Sacramento, or sorry, California is, first of all, it's a bunch of agriculture, massive agriculture. You drive outside of the big cities and you're just going to run into fields.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:49Jocko Willink?

  And so, yeah, and it's huge, blue collar, um, state. And there's just a few cities that. Are not very blue collar at all.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:59Jocko Willink?

  I don't know what they are.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:01Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so you're growing up, your, was your dad in the police force his whole, his whole career? That was his career?

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:07Jocko Willink?

  And your mom, same thing, she'd teach her her whole life and then became a principal at some point?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:11Jocko Willink?

  And what were, what were they like growing up?

• 8:14Speaker 01

  They were like regular people.

• 8:15Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  You know, just regular people.

• 8:18Jocko Willink?

  Did you, did you relate to your mom or dad from a perspective of like, hey, my dad's a cop? I'm gonna be a cop or my mom's a teacher, Vince prin- principal, I'm gonna go in that direction?

• 8:28Speaker 01

  No, I would, I would say we were not on the same vibe, like I, I've, and I, I got the sense that they were like, sort of, where did this kid come from also?

• 8:36Jocko Willink?

  I had the same sense with my parents.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, it might've been the exact opposite. Uh, yeah, like I would have loved an English teacher, you know what I mean? Like tha- that's who I was, like I was into that stuff. And also I think, I think, um, I've said this before, but it was.

• 8:53Jocko Willink?

  Hold on, you say you were into, so my mom, we were talking before we hit record, that my mom was an English teacher, my dad was a history teacher. So you just.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  That's my dream.

• 9:02Jocko Willink?

  You just said I.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Dream parents.

• 9:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, it's weird too, cause people always like, oh, that's where you, that's where, that's where you are, the way you are and blah, blah, blah. But I was, my parents were looking at me like, where did this child come from?

• 9:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:12Jocko Willink?

  Why does he act like this? Where did, where, where's this genetic, um, uh, uh, thing fell apart some, at some point in our lives? Um, but you, you just said you were into it. So you're talking, you're in high school and you are into literature?

• 9:29Speaker 01

  Yes, books, uh, ideas, like I, I wanted, I was like so excited to go to college, cause I was like, that's gonna be it. You know, and then you get to college and it's like, here's a group project, you know, it's not what you think it is, but.

• 9:42Jocko Willink?

  Wha- what kind of music were you into?

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Heavy metal. So that also they were like, who is this kid? You know, what's going on? Why does he spend so much time in his, on his computer in his room? Why is he growing his hair?

• 9:53Jocko Willink?

  How did you get into heavy metal?

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 9:56Jocko Willink?

  What was your gateway band?

• 9:58Speaker 01

  So I got into Iron Maiden. I was trying to illegally download a Metallica album and I downloaded an Iron Maiden album. I was like, what is this shit? You know, this is like, I love Metallica too, but Iron Maiden is like a different level. And I think for me, being a history person, you're like, wait, these songs are about things. You know what I mean? Like, like, and then I would go look up what those things were, you know? So I just fell totally down this rabbit hole of, of heavy metal.

• 10:26Jocko Willink?

  That's rad. That's rad. And so you're, you're into heavy metal, you're reading books. Dude, you're, you're freaking weird at this point.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Yes. I'm not like Goth or anything, but I was weird.

• 10:37Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:38Jocko Willink?

  What were your friends? Were you, did you have friends that you were hanging out with?

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I ran, so my parents, like, having a dad as cops, like, you gotta play sports. And I remember I went, we moved when I was in high school and so I started this new high school. And he's like, I want you to play football. And so I, you know, you go and everyone's in this theater. Of course, all these kids have played football their whole lives. I have not. And then the coach just starts like screaming at everyone. And I was just like, this is not me. This is not what I want. And so I ran cross country in track before. So I was like a running, a runner, a very skinny runner kid who was always getting into trouble.

• 11:13Jocko Willink?

  Were you any good?

• 11:14Speaker 01

  I was pretty good, but I was, I was, uh, I was afraid of actually trying. I realize in retrospect, like, I was pretty good and I would do what I could do on my natural talent. But the idea of really trying, clearly there was some part of me that was reluctant to do that. Because the same reason why a lot of people don't try is that if you fail, then it's on you. So I was, I, I just messed around. Like, in retrospect, cross country was insane. I don't know how it is anymore, but they'd be like, you don't get to cross country practice. And then they would tell a bunch of 14 year old boys to go on a 50 minute run and come back. You know, and so we would go to my friend's house and play video games.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  We would go steal stuff and then throw it off bridges, you know? We would just do, we would just do whatever we wanted, you know? Uh, so I was, I was that kind of kid.

• 12:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's a whole, there's a whole subculture, I guess, of just stealing stuff and throwing it off of bridges for 14 year old boys.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, of course. That's the best. It's like, you know, if you throw a computer monitor off a bridge, it implodes, you know, just like you just find stuff out.

• 12:21Jocko Willink?

  That's, you know, those little scooters, the bird scooters and a bunch. Well, I don't know what it was like. I don't know. You live in, you live in Texas, right?

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:30Jocko Willink?

  I don't know. Do they have them down there?

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Yes, unfortunately.

• 12:32Jocko Willink?

  When they originally brought them here to San Diego, just every time they would put them out, people would just destroy them. They would just throw them off of bridges, throw them off of cliffs, just destroy them. And I remember reading some article about it and, and I guess the fir-, one of the first places they did it was in Holland or something. And I said, man, the, the Dutch people seemed super nice and chill. And they were like, oh, great, electrical scooters that we can ride around. And Americans are like, cool, shit, we can break. The 14 year olds in America were like, no, we're not having this. So that's what happened.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  I, I definitely get the impulse too. Not just because I like throwing stuff off bridges, but like in Austin, there's this trail around Town Lake, you know, the, the really cool trail, which is awesome. It's like, it's amazing. One of the best running trails in the country. And people, they're not allowed on this trail, but not only will people take them on the trail, then they just pork them in the middle of the trail. So every time I see them, I want to throw them off something. I, I've, I've conquered that impulse, but uh, every once in a while I'll see one in the water and I'll go, I get it.

• 13:32Jocko Willink?

  You'll give a nod of approval.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 13:34Jocko Willink?

  Good job. To the 14 year olds out there, we salute you.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 13:38Jocko Willink?

  So are you getting good grades?

• 13:40Speaker 01

  I was okay. I, I, uh, again, I think there, I, when I look at my high school experience, I see it defined by, you know, like 70% of potential. Like when I hear kids who went to like Harvard or the Naval Academy, I'm always like blown away because like they got serious and good, like way before I was, I cared.

• 14:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 14:04Jocko Willink?

  Or their parents got serious with them.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Sure, sure.

• 14:08Jocko Willink?

  With some short term, like if you get A's.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:10Jocko Willink?

  And then they program them correctly. Or they're just into it, which is also true.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Yes, definitely. But, but just like to be in any way close to like a high level of performance at 16.

• 14:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Just is, is incomprehensible to me.

• 14:28Jocko Willink?

  You, you were not there.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  No.

• 14:29Jocko Willink?

  I was not there. I was, well, first of all, I just knew I was going to the military. So everything else just seemed like a big joke to me because I'm an idiot. Why would I have to do schoolwork? This doesn't make any sense. I'm going in the military.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:43Jocko Willink?

  So, did you have some kind of a plan? Some kind of a vision of what you were gonna do?

• 14:47Speaker 01

  I knew I wanted to. In Sacramento, I don't think I met a single person who did not have a job. And I knew I wanted to be a person that did not have a job. Not that I didn't want to work, but I didn't want to like, I didn't want to have. I wanted to be a person who did like the stuff that they wanted to do. And so I had this vague sense that Southern California was a place where stuff like that happened. You know what I mean? Like movies or music or writing or whatever.

• 15:13Jocko Willink?

  So, job to you meant like nine to five job? You're working for the man?

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Yes. You have a salary. You are not in control of your life.

• 15:21Jocko Willink?

  And you didn't like that idea?

• 15:22Speaker 01

  I didn't like that idea. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to. And I wasn't, I wasn't even sure. It wasn't until I went to college, I went to Riverside and like you meet college professors and they've written books and papers and their works. But you were like, oh, this is like, people do like, I remember we had this seminar. My, before I started my freshman year, it was like a summer thing that I did. And there was this novelist, her name is Susan Straight, who I've gotten to know since. But she, like, we all had to read this professor's novel that had won like some big prize. And I was like, oh, this is just like a regular lady that wrote it. And so that was the first thing for me where I met someone who did a thing. And I was like, oh, like people do this, you know?

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Like, regular people do stuff like that. You don't have to, this isn't, I don't know. It just made, it suddenly became much more accessible.

• 16:17Jocko Willink?

  I had a similar thing where I was a little kid running around the woods using sticks as machine guns. And then at some point I realized you could actually have that as a job. And I said to myself, oh, I'm set. You could do this for a living. And then I met one, a guy who was a Marine Corps drill instructor, who was like the older brother of a friend of mine. And it was like, same thing, like, oh, okay, cool. This is a real thing.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:43Jocko Willink?

  Where do I sign up for this gig? And I can go make this happen.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Well, you know this, you know what a nepo baby is? A nepo baby is like an actor whose kid becomes an actor. Like, they're talking about how, how many people that are famous, you realize actually had like famous or wealthy parents. And so it's kind of been this backlash against nepos. But I I don't think like Steph Curry is not great because his dad was in the NBA and that gave him an unfair advantage. I think it was partly genetics, partly he had access to the best teachers and teams or whatever, but also he saw his dad go to work at a basketball arena and that is and he saw that at an early age. So he had a head start in believing that stuff was possible. That's utterly impossible to regular people. Do you know

• 17:31Speaker 01

  what I mean? Like you realize, oh, just, just like I was probably more likely to have been a police officer or scorpion because I saw my parents do it. It's not that they they would have opened doors that would have made this thing easier. It's just like that I would have seen that as the, you know, like the, the family business.

• 17:49Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:50Jocko Willink?

  That's sort of like the path that we're following. But the Hollywood thing is different though, right?

• 17:54Speaker 01

  I'm sure.

• 17:55Jocko Willink?

  Because they're getting gigs when their, their parents are, you know, talking to the director and being like, yo, get my kid in there. I mean, that's got to be happening.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  I'm sure that's part of it, but if you can't deliver it, you're not getting more of them. Right? I think.

• 18:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  I think, uh, yeah, sure. Tom Hanks' kid is in Band of Brothers, right? Colin Hanks is in, uh, Band of Brothers, but he can also fucking act.

• 18:18Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  And so, but I think it's you see someone being in a profession, you see someone being a professional at a thing that as a fan, you don't understand as being a craft. You just like when you're watching a movie, you're just seeing the thing. You get lost in the world. You don't see that as, you don't see the process that goes into it. But when you do see the process, I think it'd be, it's demystified in a way that gives you an advantage.

• 18:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And occasionally you see someone that's not a good actor and they look bad and you go, that's the only time you realize maybe it's a little harder than it looks because everyone watches an actor be like, bro, I could go out there and do that. What's up? Right?

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 18:59Jocko Willink?

  Do you, do you not think that? You watch a movie? Well, maybe you, you understand the craft a little bit more. I think a lot of people, they just look at that like, oh, I'll go up there and give me the words to say, I'll say them. We'll be good. Let's go. Give me my money.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Or maybe you also see people who are bad, who are successful and you go, I'm better than that person.

• 19:15Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  I can do that.

• 19:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  You know, it's like you meet someone who's, that's the other thing. Like if you're a kid, you never met someone that graduated from Harvard, you think it's like this, it's like Hogwarts or something. Then you meet a dumb person who's graduated from Harvard and you're like, oh, this is, it's only later in life you go, oh, it's not like unattainable. It could have happened.

• 19:36Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  These are, these are still regular people. There's a process. You figure it out.

• 19:40Jocko Willink?

  So you're in high school. Your vision is I'm gonna not have a job. I'm gonna do something cool or I'm my own boss type thing, but you're not even sure what it is.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:48Jocko Willink?

  So then you apply to Riverside, UC Riverside?

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wanted to go to Santa Barbara, but then my high school girlfriend went to Riverside. So I made a brilliant choice.

• 19:56Jocko Willink?

  God.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  I know. I think about it all the time. I met my wife at Riverside, so it's, it's, I don't have no regrets, but I think, again, your high school and you're like, do I wanna go to, do I wanna live in the Inland Empire or do I wanna live in Isla Vista? And uh,

• 20:11Jocko Willink?

  Did you visit Santa Barbara?

• 20:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, several times.

• 20:14Jocko Willink?

  God, cuz that place is crazy.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  It's unreal.

• 20:17Jocko Willink?

  It's absolutely insane.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  It's unreal. The UCs have all the best land in California.

• 20:22Jocko Willink?

  But then you just went to Riverside and you're like, yo.

• 20:27Jocko Willink?

  That's terrible.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  It was, yeah, exactly.

• 20:29Jocko Willink?

  Um, so you show up there. What are you gonna study? What are you studying?

• 20:32Speaker 01

  Uh, political science.

• 20:35Jocko Willink?

  Because that was the first on the list?

• 20:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I liked, I liked politics. I liked, I think I wanted to be like a political writer or something like that. Um, but yeah, you don't know.

• 20:45Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  That's what's crazy too, that you can join the military at 18. It's so fucking dumb.

• 20:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, your brain, I mean, what, your brain doesn't develop till you're 25?

• 20:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:53Jocko Willink?

  So when you're 17 and you're signing the paper, you're just like, yo, let's go.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:00Jocko Willink?

  Um, so then what happened? So you only go there for like a year, right? Is that right?

• 21:04Speaker 01

  I went for two years.

• 21:06Jocko Willink?

  Two years?

• 21:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And uh, that's when I met, uh, so I became a research assistant for this guy, Robert Green, who's like one of the greatest authors of all time. And then I got-

• 21:16Jocko Willink?

  And how did you hook up with him?

• 21:18Speaker 01

  I was working for this other author and uh, he ran Robert's website. And I was just super, like this has been blogging, it's just coming out.

• 21:26Jocko Willink?

  So what year is this?

• 21:27Speaker 01

  This is oh six, oh five oh six.

• 21:31Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  So I was, I was, I was very into this, I, this world where suddenly because of the internet, It wasn't this sort of New York gatekeeping media. It was like if you made cool stuff, people could find it. That was that was just happening then. I think YouTube sold in two thousand and six or seven. So this is like when the sort of early internet culture is just happening.

• 21:52Jocko Willink?

  And I was looking through your blogs. Your first blog is two thousand and seven.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  That's probably right. I think I may have had another one. I had another one that I started right after I graduated high school, which is to oh, five. So I'd been fucking around.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  But yeah, something like that.

• 22:07Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you start working for Robert Greene.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:11Jocko Willink?

  This is while you're still in college.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  This is while I'm still in college.

• 22:14Jocko Willink?

  Where does he live? Does he live in LA or something?

• 22:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, he lives in LA. He lives.

• 22:18Jocko Willink?

  And you were just doing remote work before remote work was a thing?

• 22:20Speaker 01

  I was transcribe. Well, so so basically, he he needed a research assistant. And then I spent that summer, the summer after my sophomore year, I was a I was an assistant at a talent agency, working for this movie producer. And I was supposed to go back. And he was like,

• 22:38Speaker 01

  what if you just didn't go back? And

• 22:41Jocko Willink?

  This was the wait, this is at the at the talent agency?

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. He was like, what if he was like, I need a new assistant. Would you like to be my assistant? And like, answer the phone? And the Hollywood system is is deranged. You start by answering people's phones and running their calendar. And that's how you supposedly learn how to be like a producer or a talent manager. But so I was working for this person. And so I was on, he was like, I'll make you into a talent manager, which seemed interesting and cool. And then I was working for Robert, and Robert was just starting this book, and he needed like, a research assistant like that he would pay. And so for me, it was like, am I going to go back to school to hopefully graduate? I think I was going to graduate in three years. But I was I was like, am I going to go spend another year or year and a half in school to hope like, I was basically thinking if

• 23:28Speaker 01

  I grad if I graduated, and these were the two job offers that I had, I would have been like, college was a huge success. And so for me, it was like, am I going to go back and just read about this stuff happening? Or am I going to go do it? And I did it. And

• 23:44Jocko Willink?

  So you became a full time research assistant for Robert Greene? And what was he working on forty eight laws of power?

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Uh, no, the forty laws of power came out in like, ninety eight, I think. So this was, he was doing a book called The Fiftieth Law with Fifty Cent. And I had a trend. My first thing was I had to transcribe like, thirty hours of interviews between Robert Greene and Fifty Cent. Which was a surreal, like, super cool. It was, you know, it was a super cool experience.

• 24:10Jocko Willink?

  Wow, I went way in the other direction. I heard that and I was like, gosh, that's terrible. And you're like, super cool.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  I was like, this is, well, for me, it was like, this is how a book happens.

• 24:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  This is how you do the thing. This is the craft of, it's like, I was seeing it start with the raw materials. And then I watched like my favorite author make a book from start to finish. And so that was, I mean, you couldn't, you can't pay for a class like that.

• 24:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and it's, I'm sitting here thinking about that. So I've written the books too, and the books are in my head.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:42Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean? Which is, which is kind of, I guess, different in a way than like a Robert Greene book where he's working with 50 Cent and doing 30 hours worth of interviews and extracting the information from that. That's like a different process. It's almost like I'm cooking steak and Robert Greene is cooking a seven course meal and there's a lot more that goes into it.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  I think so. I mean, your books are you. So it's what do you think?

• 25:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  And then his books and like mine are research driven. So it's what, you know, what is, what is the scope of history say? It's like, I, you go, I'm gonna tell a story from my life to illustrate this point. And the word I does not, only in my first book, does the word I really ever appear. So like, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm the, I'm painting a picture. And so I have to go find, and this is what I learned from Robert, is how you go find the stuff.

• 25:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because if someone watched me write a book, they would get nothing out of it. They would sit over my shoulder and watch me type. You know what I mean? Like, that wouldn't be, they wouldn't get it. But the process that you're talking about is actually a process that you could take if you're gonna write that type of book.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, like I learned his, his research system. I learned all, I mean, they would still learn a lot watching you, you work, just like the discipline of doing it and then all the, the editing and the, all, all the decisions that you make along the way. I learned a lot there too, but it was really like, First off, it was just, it was like, it was like going to college because he was like, I, I had to read all the books that he didn't want to read. Or I had to read, he'd be like, I think there's something in this person's life story. And so I'd have to go read 10 books about Joe Lewis or something like that. And then I'd have to present to him what I thought he needed to know about that person to use for the story that he wanted to tell.

• 26:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's very cool. And he really must have seen something in you because I, when I read a book, like for instance, I, I cover a lot of books on the podcast. I could, I've tried to like, see, oh, someone give me an assessment of this book and I, and I can't get any, I can barely get anything out of it. So he must have had a huge amount of trust in you to be giving you that much weight of, hey, look at this and tell me what's cool about it, basically.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  I think so. I mean, he, he's smart about it. So it's like, he's doing 95% of it, right? And so I'm, I'm pursuing the things that he's pretty sure are going to be a dead end. So it's like, if I find something, it's extra. Or if I don't find something, it, it at least, he, he could at least trust me enough to eliminate something. Hey, there's not a story about Andrew Carnegie that works for this book or whatever. But it started, I mean, I, it started just transcribing interviews, which was, you know, now you can have AI do that for you, but it, it took a long time.

• 27:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. When you're reading those books for him, are you just going through the highlighter and pulling out a set of notes and giving him the high points and whatever you thought was interesting?

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. So like, I would read the book, I would fold and mark everything that was interesting. And then I would give the, I would write up a report about it and then I'd give him the book, the copy that I read, and then he would, he would sort of spot check it. And then if something, if he found something interesting, then he would go do more research. So it's, it was, it was more just like a, probably in the way that you would have, someone give you an intelligence report, like, here are the things I think you should know. And then that, that's lighting up your sort of intuition for what to, what to write off or look more into, or to ask for follow-ups. And so, yeah, but it was really just, it, it was like an apprenticeship in how to do the thing that I knew that I ultimately wanted to do.

• 28:28Jocko Willink?

  So you knew that you wanted to be an author?

• 28:30Speaker 01

  At some point.

• 28:31Jocko Willink?

  At some point in here, you figured out, I want to be an author?

• 28:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I wanted to write books. I wanted to write books like his books.

• 28:38Jocko Willink?

  Got it. Okay, so how long are you doing this job for?

• 28:43Speaker 01

  Uh, the nice thing about doing it is I could do it on the side, but I mean, probably six, seven years, something like that.

• 28:51Jocko Willink?

  Six or seven years, you were doing stuff for Robert Green?

• 28:53Speaker 01

  I kept doing it even through like my first books coming out. Like at some point, he, he like, he was like, you have to stop. And I was like, I don't want to like, to me, it was like, I remember he would go, like Robert would go, like, remember, you need to send me your hours. And I'd be like, yeah, yeah, sure. And he'd be like, no, you need to send me your, like, like, to me, the idea that I was also getting paid for, it was so like beside the point. To me, it was like, I could call Robert and ask him questions. I'd be like, Robert, like, how does, how does this happen? Like, who makes this happen? I remember once I was like, how does the index work? Like, what is that? Do you have to do that? You know, like, I was just so, the whole process is, I mean, even when you sell, when you sold your first book, it's not like they told you how it works.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  They were just like, here's some money, please come back with the thing that you've never done before, that almost no one knows how to do. And, uh, by the way, you don't get the rest of the money unless, unless we accept it.

• 29:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  So it's this, it like, when I sat down to write my first book, I had such a huge advantage.

• 29:52Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Cause I was like, I wasn't, I wasn't like groping around in the dark. I didn't know if I could, if I had an idea or the talent to pull it off, but I knew I could, I knew I could get to the end of the process. I didn't know if it would sell, but I knew I could, I had no doubt in my mind that I could do it because I'd, I'd seen it happen.

• 30:11Jocko Willink?

  So then as you're doing this, when did you kind of branch off and start sort of the marketing thing?

• 30:16Speaker 01

  So they're kind of-

• 30:16Jocko Willink?

  Is that the right, am I making the right statement there? Cause at some point you, you started a marketing company of some kind, is that right?

• 30:24Speaker 01

  So, so I was, I was working at this talent agency and it was cool. I was working with all these different artists. Uh, and then, uh, Sort of went sideways there and

• 30:34Jocko Willink?

  Hold on, you can't just like come on the podcast and just say a big joke, your life went sideways and then carry on.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  It was a surreal experience. So I was

• 30:42Jocko Willink?

  This is talent agency?

• 30:43Speaker 01

  This is a talent agency.

• 30:43Jocko Willink?

  Went sideways.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the talent agency was fine. My position there went sideways. So two, so two things happened. So first off, I drop out of college to, to work for this guy. Like the thing, the thing with Robert was not like the thing you drop out of college for. It was this, this job.

• 30:58Jocko Willink?

  How stoked were your parents that you dropped out of college?

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Oh, they, they disowned me. That was terrible.

• 31:03Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Like they were like, what are you, are you even saying? Yeah.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  And even though like when I went, the funny thing is I was just actually back there and as I was, I spoke at, uh, to the seventh regiment in 29 palms. So I flew into LAX and I drove through and I stopped in Riverside and I, I went for a run and I ran by like the building that I dropped out of. And I remember, and I think this is worth pointing out to people who, because before you make a life-changing decision, you think you were literally holding your life in your hands. And it's never that, right? It's never as scary as you think it's going to be. Remember I walked in, I think it was called Hinderhaker Hall. And I was like, you know, I'm here to drop out of college. Like I'd already told my parents, they, they were like, you know, cut me off.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  I'd already told my girlfriend's parents, like it was this, this terrible thing. And I was so scared and I go in, I'm like, I'm here to drop out of college. And they go, what? They're like, that's, there's no like, that's not a thing. And I was like, what do you mean? They're like, fill out this form. You pay $40 and you just put your, like your academic status on hold. You take a semester off. And then they were like, if you want to come back at the end of the semester, just fill out this form. And if you don't, it just tolls for 10 years. So like I, I spent all these nights thinking like, I was like literally jumping off of a cliff. And like, it was literally a $40 form that I could undo at any minute. And so it's so scary, but you don't know until you do it.

• 32:32Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, most of life's decisions are like that.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:35Jocko Willink?

  There's very few decisions in life that are actually, even if, you know, a big one is like buying a house. Even if you buy a house, even when you like worst case scenario, gosh, then you sell the house.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 32:46Jocko Willink?

  And you look, you look, you lost some money and it's going to take you a little while.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  You're going to lose all the money. You're going to lose some, like, you know what I mean? Like you're like, I'm spending $300,000. This is all the money I have in the world. It doesn't become worthless.

• 32:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a mistake. You sell the house.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  For 10% less.

• 33:01Jocko Willink?

  You sell it for 10% lower, your agent gets 3%, other agent gets 3%, you're good to go, you're gonna carry on.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:06Jocko Willink?

  There's very few decisions that are, that are permanent.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:10Jocko Willink?

  Very few.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:11Jocko Willink?

  So, this is a great example of one.

• 33:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:14Jocko Willink?

  You're like, I'm gonna drop out of college. That call, fill out this form, because we'll see you in a semester. Because they've, you know, whenever somebody does decide to drop out of college, they're just going, yeah, fill out this form and we'll see you next semester, no big deal. So, go to Europe or whatever is you're gonna do with your whatever.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Well, and I remember I told the boss that I was dropping out to work for, I was like, you know, I was like, I don't know if I, if I wanna bet like my whole life on this. And he goes, he was like, when I was in college, I got mono or some, he was like, I spent a year in the hospital. He's like, do you know how many times this has come up in my life since? He's like, zero times. I spent, it took five years instead of four. It's, he's like, if it doesn't work out, it won't work out. But, uh, so I drive back to Riverside, I do all the stuff. He gives me a week to like, you know, get out of my apartment, pack up, find a new apartment, do all this stuff. And then I, I show up at the talent agency and he's not there. And his old assistant is still there. Like, the person he was supposed to let go is still there. She has no idea why I'm there.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  And none of his, none of his, his partners in the business know why he's there. And they, you know, they're like, just sit here. And they sort of call me in and, um, they're like, so Aaron's in rehab and, uh, he, he checked into rehab and would be unavailable for the next, uh, 45 days. And, uh, the salary that we'd negotiated was, uh, they were not in agreement. So, so basically I thought, so I had this relief of like, oh, I'm not blowing up my life. And then I got there and I was like, I did blow up my life. And, and, uh, this is a terrible mistake. So, that, that, that was one thing. And then what happened was, I was working for Robert, so I always had the 48 laws of power on my desk. And I would read it because I was researching and find stuff.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  And, uh, one of the other partners became like convinced that I was like plotting or that I was untrustworthy, uh, because I was a protege of Robert Greene. And so we, we butted heads and, and there was, there ended up being this sort of spectacular blow up where I was, I was, uh, I stormed out slash was asked to leave and then. Uh, that was, that was the end of my time.

• 35:15Jocko Willink?

  You don't seem like a storm out, asked to leave type of person.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  I don't. This was a weird, this is a weird thing. He, he comes in, he's sort of like an, an Ari Gold type, you know, from Entourage, like that flashy. And, uh, the, my boss had asked me to listen in. He, he was like, listen into this phone call. And he was like, I want you to message me like, information that I need to use. So that's what I was doing. But you know, like the conference call will say like, five people listening or whatever. There's supposed to be five people on the call, but there's six, because I'm listening. And, uh, the boss goes like, uh, who, who's there? You know, who's there? I'm like 19 and so I didn't say anything. I was like, I like froze. I didn't say anything. So I just pretended that I wasn't in the call. And then he, he like finds out that I'm, I'm on the call. And he storms in, I'm like sitting like, so he storms in and he's like, I fucking knew it was you.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  You know, he's like, you've been fucked, you know, all these suspicions that he had about me. Not like I wanted to be on this dumb call. And, uh, he, he starts slamming the door, just like, oh, like he grabs the door and slams it and opens it. He was just like trying to like physically intimidate, like this kid. Uh, so anyways, I just got up and left.

• 36:23Jocko Willink?

  And that was it?

• 36:24Speaker 01

  That was it.

• 36:24Jocko Willink?

  That was it for the talent agency?

• 36:25Speaker 01

  That was, that was, that was the end of my career as a, as a future talent agent.

• 36:29Jocko Willink?

  And, and so now you're just with Robert Greene?

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Well, uh, right around that time, Robert was on the board of directors of American Apparel, which is a fashion company. He had, he was a sort of strategic advisor to the CEO. And so I met Dove then, and, uh, Dove had been asking me to come work for him, uh, as like sort of an advisor type person. And so.

• 36:51Jocko Willink?

  Wow. What's he doing asking a 19 year old freaking college dropout that just got fired?

• 36:56Speaker 01

  None of it, none of it, none of it made very much sense.

• 36:58Jocko Willink?

  What, what, what sort of, uh, vibe were you giving off that you were getting this type of offer?

• 37:05Speaker 01

  I don't know. I think, I think this is, you know, you know, like any young person, like all the people think they know how like, computers work. And so I think he, he thought that I understood some, something about the internet and online culture and all this stuff that was a big deal, which I did.

• 37:21Jocko Willink?

  That makes sense then.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  Um, and so I, like, I, I didn't even have like a title or a badge. I was just like, I reported only to this person. And that's how I started there.

• 37:31Jocko Willink?

  What year was that?

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Oh, seven, oh, eight.

• 37:34Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Seven, something like that.

• 37:35Jocko Willink?

  Oh, seven, oh, eight. So you had already had like a blog. You had already, and he was able to like, look at that and see. And this is when blogger.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  That was a thing.

• 37:45Jocko Willink?

  Like you're a blogger.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 37:46Jocko Willink?

  And that, that was enough to have him say, all right, you come and work at American. So that was in two thousand and seven.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, they'd just gone public. It was like the hottest fashion company in the world. And, uh, but it was also a mess because he hired, you know, random nineteen year olds off the street. Like, like chaotic places are good if, if you, they're good, but then they're also, they're only, they're also bad or you wouldn't have an opportunity.

• 38:13Jocko Willink?

  They're burning and they're going to burn out. They're going to explode. They're volatile and they're, they're making a lot of heat, but they're gonna, they're gonna explode.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so, uh, very soon after, like, you know, he was like, hey, take care of this, like this project. And then take care of this project and this project. And then.

• 38:29Jocko Willink?

  Give me an example of like what you're taking care of.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  Uh, I think we're spending too much money on online advertising. Tell, tell me if that's true or not. Right? Or I want, uh, people, people don't know about this that we're doing. Find someone online to write about this. So it'd be like these little things. And then I ended up sort of doing kind of an overhaul of its marketing stuff. And then ended up, it was like, so I did what you said, you know, who do you want to run it? And then he was like, you. And so I ended up running marketing. I was basically the director of marketing at American Apparel by like twenty one, twenty two.

• 39:04Jocko Willink?

  And what year? So now it's two thousand and nine?

• 39:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, something like that.

• 39:09Jocko Willink?

  Dude, so I missed, so I was in the military, an institutionalized human. That's just been, and very large portions of my life, I have no idea what was happening in the normal world. And I completely missed this whole American Apparel thing.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:21Jocko Willink?

  And, and not to mention my fashion, my connection to the fashion industry, even though I have a clothing company right now, my connection to the fashion industry is next to nothing. So I missed this whole American Apparel thing. I didn't know anything about it. And I started looking at it. And it's kind of wild. It was wild. I went and looked at all the ads, all these controversy. They're amazing ads. They're amazing ads and totally controversial, borderline, borderline extremely controversial. So that was you running all that?

• 39:53Speaker 01

  I mean, Dove was a genius and all of that was him and he, like he did everything, right? So we had this idea that the leader should do everything and he did do everything. He was a sort of singular genius. Like he was the fit model. He was the designer. He was the photographer. He was the CEO. He could sew the clothes. He could do everything, but as the company got bigger and bigger, he lacked the ability to delegate and your genius can only get you so far. But it was, I mean, it's a totally insane idea that he through sheer brilliance managed to pull off. I mean, at one point had 250 or 60 stores in 20 countries.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Revenue's almost a billion dollars. It was the largest garment manufacturer in the United States when especially then, the idea that you could still make clothes in the United States was as close to blasphemy as you could possibly get it. And like I remember the reason I worked there, I didn't give a shit about fashion. I was like a kid who liked books. He was like, come meet me at the factory. And so I go to the factory and he's like, follow me. I want to show you something. And so I'm following through the factory, like on the fourth floor, it was right in Alameda and the, and the 10 there in downtown LA in this old, you know, 100 plus year old building. And so he's walking the floor and as he's walking the floor, these sewing teams,

• 41:20Speaker 01

  which were like Korean and Mexican and all, every race you could possibly imagine, but garment workers who are making 15 to 20 bucks an hour, which is insane. They're, they are highly skilled. They're the best in the world at what they do. They're getting up and they're cheering. They're giving him like a standing ovation as he walks the floor of his factory. And it's not like a cult of personality thing. It's a like, they were working in sweatshops. The alternative was literal sweatshops and here they have health, like he built all that from the ground up when it was not supposed to be possible. And I'm sure you figured it out with apparel too. Like what, what he figured out that's so interesting and I'm fascinated by it still is like.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  So Gap makes a T-shirt for 40 cents and then they sell, they sell it for $40 or whatever, right? He was like, where does that money go? You know what I mean? Like, like you could, if you pay the workers instead of 40 cents an hour, you're paying them $14 an hour. That's only changing the cost of making the garment by like a dollar or two either way. The problem is that, that most fashion companies are in a race to the bottom as far as price goes. But if you make something cool that people want where they're not price conscious, suddenly all the ethical compromises. I remember he said once, he's like, if you're buying a swimsuit for $8, he's like, somebody got fucked. Right? His point was like, who, who

• 42:43Speaker 01

  are you exploiting to get this thing at the price that consumers are willing? So he, you know, an American Apparel T-shirt was 22 bucks in 2007, which seemed like a lot of money, but it also allowed the company to do cool shit. And so I was really fascinated by that. The whole story is also a kind of a Breaking Bad arc where this guy who had this moral purpose and genius all ends up imploding. That's what my, my book on ego is sort of informed my, also I watched the rise and the fall of that company. But it was just, I'd never seen anything like it.

• 43:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, it's been awesome. You know, we have probably 450 right now people sewing. And, and again, I just had a conversation with someone about this the other day, like the danger of automation. You can't automate sewing. Like cloth is too particular and too unique. Every little piece of cloth is a little bit different. So your human has to do it. They're not going to have a robot that can sew for a long, long, long time, even with all the advances that they're making right now. So it's got to be humans. It's got to be people and they got to have skill and they get in there. And they, this is another thing. We've really demonized factory work in America. And when the reality is when there's people that enjoy working with their hands, they like getting stuff done, they like to see what they've produced at the end of the day. It's very rewarding and

• 44:05Jocko Willink?

  it's a good job and it's a career job. So it's been awesome to participate in that and, and grow those companies and be able to do what you're talking about and pay people what they should be paid. And then on top of all that, the, the environmental stuff. Like I see a lot of companies that are out there that I believe there's a term for it, greenwashing. Have you heard of this term? Yeah, where they say, oh, well, we give this much money to the environment, but they still make their clothes in a country, which is basically any country but America, where we can dump all of the leftover chemicals right into the ocean, they go out the smokestack,

• 44:46Jocko Willink?

  and it just totally destroys the environment. So it's abusive of the workers, it's terrible for the environment, and yet we go, we're gonna give a little money to the environmental causes.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  It's organic cotton.

• 44:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and it's total bullshit. So we're fighting against that, and that's why I was really, when I was reading about American Apparel and what it did, it was very interesting for me to read, and certainly for him to be able to pull that off. It's been hard for us to pull it off, and we've done it, you know, we've been able to pull it off, and we're gonna continue to keep growing and get bigger and better. But it's a very fascinating story, and it definitely parallels a lot of what we're doing. Without the, like, we just have a little bit of a dis- a little bit more of a disconnection from, I would say that like the high fashion type thing, where more mainstream, normal, human clothing.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  But that's a couple of things he figured out. I mean, so first off, it was vertically integrated. So like, they, he knitted their own, he knitted the fabric, cut it, dyed it, so he did, and then ran his own stores. So he realized that where is the money going if it's so cheap to make? It's all the middlemen along the way.

• 45:52Jocko Willink?

  Cut, cut, cut, cut.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Which I thought was really interesting. And then his other thing was, okay, like, you remember a couple of years ago, there's a controversy where like the CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch, the Abercrombie and Fitch stores, when they would, when stuff wouldn't sell, they would cut it up and throw it in the garbage, the clothes. And they're like, why could you do that? Well, it's because the stuff is actually worthless, right? If it doesn't sell in the sales cycle, it's worthless. And it actually costs more to ship it back to some warehouse and store it, where by the way, it becomes less valuable every day. Because it's not like, unless they hold on it for 30 years, the fashion's never coming back.

• 46:27Jocko Willink?

  And you're paying to store it.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 46:29Jocko Willink?

  The storage, which might not seem like a big deal, but it's a big deal.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, and especially if you're doing millions of pieces, right? So what Dove figured out was, hey, if you make stuff that doesn't go out of style, you make classics or basics, and you don't venture into shit that is trendy. You bypass all of that. So, you know, if you don't sell this blue T-shirt in March, you'll sell it in April or May. And, and so he, he, for the first seven, like, decade of the company, why it was so huge is that he sold not just the stuff that, that people always wanted, but stuff that

• 47:03Jocko Willink?

  Evergreen.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Evergreen. And that you would go, oh, I wore out this T-shirt. I'm gonna go get another one. Not, and you knew they had the stuff you wanted. So when you make shit that is perennial, that's timeless, you are not in this cycle of, of sort of planned obsolescence, which is, which is not only exploitative to the customer, it's also really hard because you have to be so right. Right? Like, I'll give you an example. For, for Daily Stoic, like, I have a calendar, like a page a day calendar. And so, when I first did it, it was, you know, January, Monday, January 1st, right? And then, thinking about something I learned from Dove, I was like, wait, shit, if I just don't put the day on the calendar, if I just make it a January 1st calendar, I don't have to guess how

• 47:47Speaker 01

  many to make each year. And I can make it better and cheaper and in a less exploitative way, because it's perennial, right? And so if you think, if, if, if you just take, if you start from not wanting to fuck people over and not seeing yourself as a predictor of the future, you, you have such a wider target and you can make better decisions. It's like, people always are gonna want this. They always want T-shirts and socks and underwear and whatever. And then, it was even the point, like, if he made a weird, if he made a pink T-shirt, people didn't like it, because he owned his own dyed, he could send the T-shirt back and dye it a different color. So it was, it was a brilliant thing that could be

• 48:29Speaker 01

  today, a hugely valuable company, but, you know, he ended up destroying.

• 48:34Jocko Willink?

  Now, what was the destruction? How did the destruction take place?

• 48:37Speaker 01

  Well, there's a huge me too part of it, which is just a collapse of ethics and, and discipline. You know, he would have relationships with employees, even though over and over and over again, he was like, this, not only is it not okay, like, it's, it exposes the company to all sorts of legal liability and lawsuits and ultimately. But, but the big thing was, and I see this all the time in life, so, American Apparel is a hot, huge company, but

• 49:05Speaker 01

  Urban Outfitters, Forever 21, there were these other fast fashion companies that were growing faster, that were getting more media attention, and he started trying to copy them. So like, American Apparel had 25 stores in New York City, because they were basics. H and M has two, and they're big flagship stores. So they're in totally different business models. But what people do is they try to have their model and do what someone else is doing. And so he started trying to compete with people who were running totally different races, and abandoned the idea of only selling classic stuff. So he would try to ride waves of trends. So he would make something, and then it wouldn't sell, and then he started

• 49:48Speaker 01

  to choke slowly on the inventory. But the big mistake was, making a t-shirt requires eight sewers. Making a button up like this, 40 sewers. And so not only was he switching towards pieces that were less profitable, and less perennial, but they would take the teams off the core efficiency. So it's, I mean, it's a really timeless business story. It's like, you drift out of your lane, and then you crash.

• 50:24Jocko Willink?

  And that's what it was?

• 50:26Speaker 01

  That was a huge, that was a huge part of it. And then it was lawsuit after lawsuit, and then the banks wouldn't lend on it. And then just kind of spiraled into, I write about this in one of my books, but he was also like, no discipline in his personal life. So, never slept. He would call me at three in the morning, just to talk about stuff. It'd be like, three, three in the morning, his time. Like, he would just call, he was, he was a workaholic with no boundaries. And I think he kind of worked himself almost into like a psychosis. Like, like, just like a, like a Howard Hughes kind of...

• 51:04Speaker 01

  State where you're not on this planet anymore.

• 51:08Jocko Willink?

  When you would meet with him, did he listen to other people? Would he take your ideas? Would he say, oh yeah, that sounds like a good idea? Would someone push back on him? And or was he the type of person? Cause I've known people like this that are so convincing and so persuasive that even when they're wrong, they win every argument.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  It was exactly that. I remember one time he called a bunch of like the executives into the office and it was like a three hour meeting, like a three hour meeting where he talked the whole time. I remember I was leaving and one of the creative directors who was brilliant and she'd been there like from the beginning. What was that? You know, cause I'm like 20, I haven't seen. And she goes, the thing about Dove is that Dove wants to be heard a little bit more than he wants to be successful. And it was like, oh, he, he, he's a performer. At the end, like he's, at the end of the day, he wants to vent and be listened to and go through the, you know, he, he, he was like in these sort of manic rants, basically.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  And, and you see like, there's lots of, we just had a president who liked to do that, right? It's like, I'm not here to learn what I need to learn, accomplish what I need to accomplish, delegate what needs to be delegated. It's, I need to air my personal grievances, my theories about the universe. You know what? It's, it is a very, it's, it's both a toxic leadership trait, but it's also an intoxicating leadership trait. And what you, what I saw happen, it only became clear to me in retrospect is like, they would, like the investors or Robert, who's on the board would, they'd be like, we're bringing in this new person, this like, this person's from Apple, this person's from this company. And they would make it like three months, you know, and then leave. And then what I realized was happening again, to me, this is like how business worked. Like I had to unlearn so many habits.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  Like this was normal. It's like if your parents screaming at each other all the time, you're like, isn't this what everyone's parents do? But I realized they would show up and go, oh. No way this is gonna succeed. They knew that this was not how it was done. And so they would leave. And so what the interesting thing about egotism or craziness in leaders, it's not just that they make bad decisions, but they also repel people who make good decisions. Because they go, I'm not gonna be heard. This is dysfunctional. Life's too short. You know, they want no part of it. And so it was this kind of constant shedding of talented operators that he desperately needed around him. And all that was left was like

• 53:30Jocko Willink?

  Crazy people.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  Crazy people or wildly unqualified people, which I was in retrospect, obviously one.

• 53:37Jocko Willink?

  So what year does it kind of fall apart? Did they go BK? Like, what happened to him in the end?

• 53:43Speaker 01

  So I wrote my first book in 2012. So like I, I stayed on and was like an advisor, like a sort of consultant. And so I stayed on until like 2014. And it was getting crazier and crazier. At one point, he sort of locks himself into this, this facility in La Mirada. It was like a distribution facility. Like he moves in there, like he has a shower installed in the office and he's like sleeping there on this cot. And he's going

• 54:12Jocko Willink?

  And this is him trying to salvage what's going on and trying to, if I work harder.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  It was like, you know, this is why sleep's so important. He makes a bad impulsive decision that reflection and an advisory council would have warned him against. And then instead of backing up and going, shit, I shouldn't have done that. He forces it. And then he's like, well, I'm gonna save, I'm gonna move into the facility. And he brings every, he brought everyone there, even though the factory was downtown. He brings everyone there. They're all commuting to La Mirada. And he's like, he just has this basically break with realities. Losing his mind. The stock price is at like 70 cents. And the banks won't lend because he's been sued over and over again. And the board had given, the board, like a board of directors.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  People ask like, how did so and so get away with it? As long as you're winning, people will let you get away with pretty much everything. And then when it's not, all the deferred, it's like all the deferred maintenance comes to. And so the board started to get a sense of what was happening. And then they came to him with an offer. They were like, look, you've run the company into the ground, but you also built this brilliant thing that can't, you know, exist without you. And they were like, here's the deal. You can resign as CEO and stay on as creative advisor. We'll pay you a million dollars a year and you'll keep all your shares. Or this is the press release we are putting out right now about you being fired for a cause.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  And he goes, let me like, think about it for a minute. He walks out, comes back and he's like, I choose door number three. Fuck all of you. Like, Wolf of Wall Street, just straight up, I'm not leaving. Yeah. And, and he, The show goes on. He, he assures this hedge fund that he is, of course, innocent of everything he's ever been accused of. That he has been, you know, unfairly thrown out. He pledges them as collateral, all of his shares. And says like, I need you to initiate a hostile takeover. Drives the company into bankruptcy. I, I came back after he left to hopefully like turn things around.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  They requested the board, which was a grand, I was supposed to be writing ego is the enemy as this is happening. So it was like the greatest ringside scene you could have possibly imagined. And, you know, he's basically trying, he's trying to jockey the thing. And it's like, he must have, in retrospect, I think about it so much. It's like, not only did he know where the bodies were buried, people like me also knew where the bodies are buried because we were there when things happened. Like the idea that he was going to be vindicated in this process was delusional. And, you know, he ends up, He ends up driving it into bankruptcy as basically chokes it to death on legal fees, goes into bankruptcy, his shares become worthless, he's not cleared in the investigation by

• 57:07Speaker 01

  the hedge fund. So they confiscate the shares, the remaining equity, and he ends up owing them $20 million. So he goes, his shares were at one point, one point worth something like 500 or 600 million dollars. And he ends up negative $20 million. And just recently, he was, he is now in business with Kanye West. He is running Kanye West's fashion company. So it's so far, he's now in like the only person in the world that will do business with a notorious anti-Semi. And Dove is Jewish. So it's, it's just ego sucks you down like the law of gravity.

• 57:49Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so, uh, trust me, I'm lying. Confessions of a media manipulator. Um, let me take, so this is the book that you wrote in 2012. You say this, "My full-time job then was director of marketing for American Apparel, a clothing company known for its provocative imagery and unconventional business practices. And I would go on to found my own marketing company, Brass Check, which would orchestrate stunts and marketing trickery for other high-profile profile clients, from authors who sell millions of books to entrepreneurs worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I create and shape the news for them. Usually, it's a simple

• 58:31Jocko Willink?

  hustle. Someone pays me, I manufacture a story for them, and we trade it up the chain, from a tiny blog, to a website of a local news network, to Reddit, to the Huffington Post, to the major newspaper, to cable news, and back again, until the unreal becomes real."

• 58:48Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes I start by planting a story. Sometimes I put out a press release or ask a friend to break a story on their blog. Sometimes I leak a document. Sometimes I fabricate a document and leak that. Really, it can be anything from vandalizing a Wikipedia page to producing an expensive viral video. However, the play starts, the end is the same. The economics of the internet are exploited to change public perception and sell product. Now, I was hardly a wide-eyed kid when I entered this world. I grew up online and I knew that in every community, there were trolls and tricksters. Like many people, I remained a believer. I thought the web was a meritocracy and that the good stuff generally rose to the top.

• 59:28Jocko Willink?

  But spending serious time in the media underworld, watching as the same outlets who fell for easy marketing stunts, seriously report on matters of policy or culture will disabuse you of that naivete. It will turn that hope into cynicism. Though I wish I could pinpoint the moment it fell apart. When I realized that the whole thing was a giant con, I can't. All I know is that eventually I did. It's ultimately what put me on the path to write this book. So as you're doing all this, so that's like a crazy thing to read. It must be, when you, when you, when I read that right now, are you kind of like?

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  It's, I have a weird relationship with that book, for sure.

• 1:00:10Jocko Willink?

  Because you're sort of a grown man now, who talks about Stoicism and telling the truth. And this thing is like you were a propagandist to make money for savages.

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and to do that, you become a savage.

• 1:00:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  It was weird. It was weird. It, the whole thing seems like a fever dream.

• 1:00:32Speaker 02

  It kind of had that blogger tone to a little bit, your writing style on that one. You know, it kind of still feels like that blogger, you know, getting after.

• 1:00:40Jocko Willink?

  Like a little admission of what's going on behind the scenes.

• 1:00:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I would have liked to have read that book, but no one had written it. And so I was like, you know, I think I'm, I knew what I wanted to write about, but I also felt like I had this unique perspective on this thing that had happened. And I was like, I'll write about that first.

• 1:01:02Jocko Willink?

  When you look at media, when you look at advertising now, is it all just gross to you?

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  Well, it's funny, like, I remember I was writing that book, so I was writing it in 2011, and I remember telling my publisher, like, this has to come out, like, right now. Like, this is all gonna be old news, like, if it's not out soon. And then, basically, it was, like, 10 years early, you know? Like, all the things I'm talking about in that book are really what we see and are complaining about today. Right? Like, the idea of fake news, or misinformation, or disinformation, all, like, a big chunk of what I'm talking about is, like, what foreign actors do now. How they, like, they found, for instance, in the 2016 election, and with others, like, Russia will create, like, fake Facebook groups, get people around certain ideas,

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  and then those Facebook groups will get written about, or, um, I was talking about that shit then, which you could do to promote a movie, or a fashion launch.

• 1:02:01Jocko Willink?

  A book, or whatever.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, you think what American Apparel would do, I'll give you an example. Um, we noticed, like, whenever we would do a controversial ad, that, um, that it would get written about, so we get publicity for the new ad, which is, like, your dream as a company, yeah. So, um, I remember this one guy, uh, he, he, he, um, he was making fake American Apparel ads, like, he would, he would put them up, and then people would talk about how American Apparel had this new ad campaign, or was it real or not? And I realized, oh, no one's even checking, right? And, and then it turned out it wasn't even real, like, he wasn't even making these in real life. He was just photoshopping them onto buildings, and then he would, like, post them. He would post them on social media, and then websites would write about them.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  And so I was like, we could do that. I was like, why are we, I was like, if, if an American Apparel ad is newsworthy, why do we have to pay for it to run somewhere? Why don't we just put it on our website and say, this is our new ad? Which we would do. So we would put ads on the American Apparel website, and it would be, like, a major news story, and it literally was not more than a PDF. And so, so, that's, as a marketing, as a marketer, that's, like, exciting, and cool, and crazy, and interesting, and a challenge. And then you go... The reporter who's writing about this ad that does not exist is then the next day writing about a political story, or a cultural story, or celebrity gossip, whatever.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  And you go, they don't have like, two sets of standards, right? Like, this is the same person, just relying on the same random tip that came in. And so it was this sort of slow awakening process for me of like, hey, look, I can sleep at night with what I'm doing because it's relatively harmless. Although certainly not so harmless people would, had tried to hire me many times. But realizing like, oh, this, this is not good. Like, this is not, this is not the world that, this is, if America is a country where your leaders are publicly elected, then basically, popular opinion is the ruler of the country that you live in, right? Because that's how we find out about people.

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  That's how policies get, you know, thumbs up or thumbs down. And so it was realizing that this whole thing was just like, that I'd peeked behind the curtain in a way that was very hard to unsee. And so I tried to write a book that was compelling and interesting, but the sort of, the main message was like, this is not how things should be.

• 1:04:32Jocko Willink?

  This is a warning?

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

  This is bad. This is really bad. And that's not how the book ultimately was received.

• 1:04:39Jocko Willink?

  Well, how was it received?

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  Well, the, the initial media attention was like overwhelmingly negative, like, like I was the problem. And then what happened is like-

• 1:04:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh, like, you were a scumbag? Like, you're the guy that was doing this, and you're a scumbag? You made all this stuff happen? You tricked us?

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  Like, I did this thing for the book where, there, there used to be this service, it was called Help a Reporter Out. And the service was like, reporters, like, let's say they're doing a trend piece on MMA. They'd be like, who wants to, like, who's an expert on MMA? And you'd be like, me. And so, I was like, well, I'll just pretend to be an expert about a bunch of shit that I don't know anything about. And let's see if they actually check if I'm an expert.

• 1:05:19Jocko Willink?

  Was this an online service?

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:21Jocko Willink?

  Helpareporterout.com or something like this?

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 1:05:24Jocko Willink?

  Who's in, and so, a reporter would put on there, hey, I'm doing a, a story about MMA, any experts out there?

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:31Jocko Willink?

  And Ryan Holiday-

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  And it'd be like, whoever, whoever answers first, they would talk to. And so you know when you read trend pieces, and they're like, so and so says they love skateboarding, or whatever? You think this is like, a person they found on the street skateboarding. But as I found out as part of this thing, like, they may not even own a skateboard, right? Like, they could just say whatever they wanted. So I was quoted in, like, the New York Times, and Good Morning America. I was quoted in every media outlet you can imagine.

• 1:05:53Jocko Willink?

  In what? As an expert in what?

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  About anything that they want. No, no, anything that they wanted in that story. So if they're like, like, I was quoting the New York Times, uh, it's about the resurgence of vinyl records, of which I knew nothing about. And I just gave, I just made up this long answer about vinyl records, and there I am, quoted, "The paper of record in the United States." And so, uh, this is something I'm doing for the book.

• 1:06:17Jocko Willink?

  Saying, like, the thing with vinyl records is you get that sound quality that you just don't get on a CD, and, and also it's something physical that you can hold, and there's a whole bunch of nostalgia that goes along with it. That's why me and my friends are out there buying vinyl once again. Ryan Holiday.

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  You could have been in this story. That's almost exactly what it was. Um, but like, I may not have even been a real person. Like, this is just an exchange over, you know? And, and so, this is, this, like, I'm writing about this going, like, this is not how the sausage should get made. And the media reaction was, uh, "Look at this guy, he's fucking up how the sausage is made." Not like, "The process is bad." So that's, like, reaction number one is that. And then reaction number two is, the book starts to become really popular with real bad actors.

• 1:07:03Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say, this is like the anarchist cookbook.

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:06Jocko Willink?

  Like, for, for people that are wanting to figure out how to do guerrilla-type marketing. Is that a good term?

• 1:07:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, all right people, and just like, just not good dudes, were like, "This is my favorite book," you know? Just hear from people, you're like, "Oh, that's not, I don't like that. I don't want that to be true."

• 1:07:25Jocko Willink?

  How long did it take for you to realize, like, did you do a book signing where you were just a bunch of sleaze balls, start asking, like, "Hey, when, when you do this, like, what's the best way to get people to, to buy into your scam?"

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, where it'd be, you know, you just... So here's the weird part. So I wrote the book and it is true that like people's reputa- we call it now cancel culture. That was not a thing then, but people's like reputations will get ruined from like random rumor or something that's not true or something that's taken out of context. So I talk about that in the book and Dove, Dove was complicated in that Dove was doing shit that he shouldn't have done. And then some of the stuff wasn't true. And so I talked more about the stuff that wasn't true in the book. So the, the real thing that slowly affected me on the book was just like, I've probably heard from every major person who has been me tooed since the book came out and they're all hundred percent innocent when they call, you know what I mean?

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  Like, and it was this process of, it's probably like what a defense attorney goes through where you start and you're like, everyone's innocent. They're being railroaded. And then you're just like, they can't all be innocent. And then you, they're all guilty, you know? And you just start to dislike the clients that you're, you know, hired to protect. And so it was a kind of just a process for me of like, that's not how I live my life. And even when I worked at American Apparel, like I was with my now wife the entire time. I wasn't interested in any of the shenanigans or any of the mischief or any of that shit. And so that was also just a process of like people wanting to use the book because

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  they, they wanted it to like, they were just convinced that they were like the victims when they were really the victimizers. You know what I mean? So I have, I have a weird relationship with the book. And that's been a process. Also, yeah, I mean, I wrote it when I was 24.

• 1:09:15Jocko Willink?

  And as you're writing it though, you kind of think that you're a magician that's like gonna tell how the magician tricks work.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:09:22Jocko Willink?

  And so then you get people that are like, yo, why are you telling how our magician trick works? And you also get people going, oh, I can use these magician tricks to like rip people off. That's basically what you did.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and you expect if you, if you, if you say how the tricks work, the trick should stop working. That was my thinking. Like people were like, whoa, why are you talking about it? Well, I'm like, if I lay it all out, obviously all these loopholes will get closed, right? Like this won't be possible anymore. It'll be compelling read, but it's the, it's the final chapter in a lot of this stuff. And that's just not, not the case. Like there's very little in that book that's aged.

• 1:10:02Speaker 01

  It's some of it's aged badly, but it's all true still.

• 1:10:05Jocko Willink?

  And it's accelerated, right? Obviously.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, because now even less people get their, I mean,

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  social media is the main news source for most people. So it's not even like when I was talking about how social media would filter into the mainstream media.

• 1:10:21Jocko Willink?

  Now it's.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  Now it just is.

• 1:10:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And anyone like you talking about how you had to like get it to a blogger and nowadays you just make up a, make up a Twitter account and just fire something off and

• 1:10:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:34Jocko Willink?

  Keep your fingers crossed.

• 1:10:35Speaker 01

  And now you don't even have to do it. It's like now you could write code that does it. You could have a bot. You know what I mean? Like what percentage of tweets or internet comments were these extreme things that we, we all get mad? Is that person even real?

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

  Probably.

• 1:10:49Jocko Willink?

  Probably not.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or are they working in some, you know, computer farm in Moscow or something? Or North Korea, right? Like foreign actors have realized, hey, like if we can get our, we can't attack America, but we can pit Americans against each other. And so what is the most extreme shit? We can get someone to say from this side. So then people pile on, then people distant, like, how do we make certain ideas radioactive? How do we pit people against each other? How do we just drive everyone crazy? The more time they're spending on social media is time they're not spending doing actual shit that matters.

• 1:11:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I've been talking a lot lately about when I was running the training, the advanced training for SEAL platoons. You want to, you want to put them in under pressure situations. You want to see how they're going to perform. But one of the ways that you could guarantee that they were just going to fall apart and just, and just do a terrible job was to, if there was any kind of like a little, little friction or a little fault line inside the platoon. And if that, if they couldn't, if, if, if one of the, let's say it's the, the platoon chief versus the platoon commander. If the, if one of them couldn't sort of subordinate their ego and be like, okay, fine. We'll just do it your way. If they both just held strong, all of a sudden you'd get this, this little fracture would just turn into a fault line,

• 1:12:08Jocko Willink?

  would just turn into an earthquake and everything would fall apart and they'd just be, hey, they would fight each other and hate each other and it'd be terrible. Anytime you can get a team to go against itself, the team is going to lose.

• 1:12:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:21Jocko Willink?

  And so it's so clear that that so much of that is happening in America right now. And we spend so little time going, ah, you know, Ryan's a pretty good guy. He thinks this, but he seems like a good, good enough dude. I don't know. We're fine. Instead of going, well, actually Ryan thinks this. He's an evil person and he doesn't even understand things and I know everything and I'm obviously right about everything. So I hate him.

• 1:12:46Speaker 01

  There was a, there was a thing that really, really hit me home after the book came out. So I live in this little town called Bastrop, Texas. Do you remember the Jade Helm 15 conspiracy theory?

• 1:12:55Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  It was one of the first Russian psyops before the election interference and stuff. Which is basically through these like Facebook groups, they started this rumor that I, this is like maybe 2015. Remember there was a series of like, uh, uh, army exercises or military exercises in the southern part of the United States, where they were practicing for like a Russian invade, they're practicing for like an invasion. They needed, they're doing this broad sort of war game in the US. And they, they spread this conspiracy theory that, um, that the federal government was planning a takeover of the states. Which is ironic because that's what the civil war was about. And it's already been set, it's like already a settled issue. But, but they started this conspiracy theory that like starts in social media.

• 1:13:40Speaker 01

  Then these blogs start talking about it. Then news outlets are reporting on how people are worried about it. And then like citizens are arming. And then Greg Abbott, the governor, sends the National Guard to observe the exercises. Right? So they watched as this fake thing. Now suddenly, literally the, the, the National Guard and the actual army are like potentially in a conflict zone. Right? And, and it's like sort of trademark the kinds of stuff that I was talking about in the book. I mean, and this is what, I think when people think cyber warfare, they think like hacking. And that can be part of it. Yeah. You fuck up an electrical grid or, you know, uh, the launch of a missile.

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  That's, but a big chunk of it is more like in information, uh, cyber attacks, where you're spreading out things and getting people riled up about stuff that's not true.

• 1:14:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's.

• 1:14:34Jocko Willink?

  All the stuff that you're talking about in that book is exacerbated now.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:14:38Jocko Willink?

  And more true now.

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  Cause we're more online now.

• 1:14:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:42Speaker 01

  Like, there was, I think even when I was writing that book, there was still distinction between like the internet and real life. And now, I mean, just everyone lives on the internet.

• 1:14:53Jocko Willink?

  Disturbing.

• 1:14:56Jocko Willink?

  Your next book that you rolled into was, uh, Growth Hacker Marketing. A primer on the future of PR, marketing and advertising. So, what, same vein, I guess.

• 1:15:11Speaker 01

  A little less nefarious.

• 1:15:12Jocko Willink?

  A little, a little less nefarious.

• 1:15:16Jocko Willink?

  You say this, "Flashback to 1996 before Hotmail had launched as one of the first free webmail services and became an early example of a product going viral. As the journalist Adam Penenberg describes the meeting in his book Viral Loop, Hotmail's founders Sabir Batia and Jack Smith sat across the table from Tim Draper, the famous venture capitalist. He told them he thought the product web-based email was great, but he wondered how they get the word out. Batia's first instinct was that industrial marketing approach we've been talking about. We'll put it up on a billion billboards, or sorry, we'll put it up on billboards. He said, "Draper nixed such an expensive approach for what would be a free product.

• 1:15:57Jocko Willink?

  So they kicked around more ideas. Radio ads, same problem. What about sending an email to everyone on the internet?" Draper suggested. That was the, that was only a slightly newer version of the old mindset. Spam doesn't work. Then Draper happened accidentally on growth hacking. "Could you?" he asked, "put a message at the bottom of everybody's screen." "Oh, come on. We don't, we don't want to do that. But can you technically do it? Can you put it, can you put it on one message and if he sends an email to somebody else, you can put it on that one too, right?" "Yeah, yeah," they replied. "So put, 'PS, I love you. Get your free email at Hotmail at the bottom.'" This little feature changed everything. It meant that every email that Hotmail users sent would be an advertisement for the product.

• 1:16:41Jocko Willink?

  And that advertisement was effective, not because it was cute or creative, but because it showcased an amazing product that many people wanted and needed. Each you knew, each user meant new users. Each email meant more emails and more happy customers. And most crucial, all this could be tracked and tweaked and improved to drive as many users as possible into the service.

• 1:17:03Jocko Willink?

  You say that this was revolutionary and you go on to talk about what growth hacking is. A growth hacker is someone who has thrown out the playbook of traditional marketing and replaced it with only what is testable, trackable, and scalable. Their tools are emails, data targeting, blogs, and platform APIs instead of commercials, publicity, and money. While their marketing brethren chase vague notions like branding and mind share. I haven't heard mind share in a while, that's no fun. Growth hackers relentlessly pursue users and growth. And when they do it right, those users become evangelists for products, bringing more users with them. Growth hackers are the inventors, operators, and mechanics of a self-sustaining, self-propagating

• 1:17:47Jocko Willink?

  growth machine that can take a company just, not just from zero to one, but from one to a hundred or a hundred million. So what was the, what made you decide to write this book?

• 1:17:59Speaker 01

  I was, I was interested in this sort of group of all those big companies that were now multi-billion dollar companies. You know, they basically launched with no marketing whatsoever. And they grew faster than any company has ever grown. And sort of what are the lessons in that? I mean, I think about your brands, right? Like if an established, like consumer packaged goods company was going to launch any of the stuff you did, and they were like, well, what's that going to cost? 10 million, right? Like, the whole thing would have been at a, at a almost incomprehensible scale and almost certainly would have failed. Like, what's their, what's their hitting percentage? It's extremely low.

• 1:18:40Speaker 01

  And then you look at these people who have built these huge brands off the back of a single Instagram account, or a YouTube channel, or, you know, like, and so I was just really interested in how, like, the game had sort of fundamentally changed. Like, what, what Don Draper was doing in Mad Men is not how marketing works today. I mean, it's, it works, once you, it's still kind of what you do at a, at a very high level, like, once you're already huge. But when you're building something from scratch, which is what most of us are doing, right? We're trying to launch a coffee shop, or a book, or a brand, or yoga studio, or whatever it is, we're starting from zero. So it's really like, how do you go from zero to those first people? And why don't we learn from like the best people that have ever done and that that idea

• 1:19:24Speaker 01

  of growth like one of Facebook's early decisions is they didn't have a marketing department. They had a growth department and that seems like a kind of a semantic difference, but like a marketing department does marketing and a growth department grows, right? Like just the word there is is illustrative and you know, marketing is like, we're going to throw a premiere party and we bought everyone T-shirt, you know, like it's it's all this stuff that's cool. We're gonna have a booth at the Sundance Film Festival or what, right? It's stuff that's cool for the marketers, but nobody knows if it works or not. And so it's all about that. That's what it's about. And that book, that book, what's weird about that book is it kind of proved that that book started as an article, then it became an ebook, then

• 1:20:09Speaker 01

  it was a paperback, and then it was an extended, I think it's on its like third or fourth edition. So it was kind of a weird, it's also not how books really work.

• 1:20:17Jocko Willink?

  When you wrote, when Trust Me Online came out, what, that come up through a traditional publisher?

• 1:20:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:25Jocko Willink?

  And you got a book deal? How'd you get that book deal?

• 1:20:27Speaker 01

  Um, I got an agent. I knew Tim Ferriss's agent. So we have the same agent, Steve. And I just went and I didn't need the money. So I just wrote, I wrote the book. I was like, this is the book. It's coming out regardless. And then I saw, I showed it to him and asked him if he thought I could sell. And it did. It sold at an auction. It was this big thing. It was funny, actually, then then I we put up-

• 1:20:52Jocko Willink?

  What, the publishers had an auction?

• 1:20:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It was like a, it was a hot book.

• 1:20:55Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:20:56Speaker 01

  Which was pretty cool at like 24. But then the funny thing is when I announced it, I just doubled the size of the advance. I just said, you know, I said I got paid like a half a million dollars for it, which I didn't. But nobody checks press releases. And so then then the thing got a bunch of press as this like huge book coming out and sort of proved my point. But, but yeah, so then-

• 1:21:18Jocko Willink?

  And then did you do all your viral marketing for that book?

• 1:21:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:21Jocko Willink?

  And how did, how did it do?

• 1:21:22Speaker 01

  It sold really well. It sold really well. It got a lot more attention than it sold copies. It sold really well. And then the Growth Hacker book came out and then then I went to my publisher and I said, actually, I don't remember the exact time, but at some point I'd done these marketing books and I went to my publisher and I was like, for my next book, I'd like to write about an obscure school of ancient philosophy. And they were like, you know, it was like a record scratch thing. And that was that was the big sort of pivot. It felt like a pivot to them. To me, it was always what I wanted to do.

• 1:22:01Jocko Willink?

  When you are doing this, doing the marketing, these two books right here, it seems like you have to be good at marketing these books and do well with them. Otherwise, it's kind of like, you know, why are you teaching us about this stuff?

• 1:22:14Speaker 01

  That's what I told him. I was like, I was like, watch me prove, I was like, watch me prove it with this book, which I, which I did.

• 1:22:20Jocko Willink?

  And so you pulled it off?

• 1:22:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:22Jocko Willink?

  You pulled it off with both those books? Did you, so did Growth Hacker Marketing eventually come out on a traditional publisher?

• 1:22:28Speaker 01

  So, yes, yes, it did. Actually, all my books are with the same publisher, except for my kids' books, because you gave me some advice on self-publishing them.

• 1:22:35Jocko Willink?

  Oh, right on.

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  But yeah, all of them were traditional publishers.

• 1:22:40Jocko Willink?

  And what about Tim Ferriss's book, this, The Four Hour Chef?

• 1:22:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:46Jocko Willink?

  What was your involvement with that?

• 1:22:47Speaker 01

  So I met Tim right before I dropped out of college, actually, in 2007, at South by Southwest. And we kind of became friends. And so I worked on the marketing on all of his books.

• 1:23:03Speaker 01

  And, I mean, I took that job because I wanted to learn from Tim, which I learned so much from because he's a genius.

• 1:23:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:10Speaker 01

  And you just watched those things become just absolute monsters. But yeah, we did the marketing for.

• 1:23:16Jocko Willink?

  But that was a weird book, though, because it was the book that came out on Amazon Publishing and he got hated by every other normal publisher and they wouldn't carry it in bookstores. It was mayhem.

• 1:23:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, basically, got, basically, all the retailers teamed up and said, why would we carry a book from our biggest existential threat? And so we ended up doing this thing where we gave a huge chunk of it away on BitTorrent, which was like a piracy website. And And so like million, but millions of people downloaded in the, you know, the book sold super well.

• 1:23:48Jocko Willink?

  It was weird. So I met Tim and Tim is to blame for like everything that I do right now. So good job, Tim. Appreciate it. But when I met Tim, the, my first book hadn't come out yet. And the things that he was saying to me, I was, you know, like thinking, okay, yes, okay. You know, because he'd done really well. And it was so weird that my publisher, I mean, my publisher is now, what has it been? Almost eight years later, they're now more, for lack of a better word, hip to what's going on.

• 1:24:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:22Jocko Willink?

  But at the time, they, what the, how far ahead strategically, Tim Ferriss was in 2015, was, was, was crazy. For example, he said, he's like, I'm going to put this podcast. So my book was coming out. Extreme Ownership was coming out October 20th or something like this. And he says, yep. He's like, okay, this is the podcast is because I recorded a podcast, my first ever interview with him. He's like, I'm going to put the podcast out September, whatever, late September. And I said, he said, that way we're going to get a bunch of pre-sales on Amazon. It's kind of blah, blah, blah. He had this whole, this whole thing.

• 1:25:01Jocko Willink?

  And so I talked to my publisher and the, and they said, they said, can you get him to put the podcast out? The, the week of book launch. And I was like, I'll ask him. And so I said, hey, man, they really want you to put this out on the week of the book launch. And he's like, that's because they have no idea what they're talking about.

• 1:25:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:22Jocko Willink?

  And he, and he was just so right. Cause I've now done it a bunch of times. And he, he was just so right. And he just knew, he, he had so much strategic insight as to what was happening compared to what the traditional book publishers. And look, there's some great people. I, I have a team there that has helped me launch a bunch of books. They've done a great job, but he definitely was ahead of the power curve when it came to how to get this shit done right.

• 1:25:47Speaker 01

  I think what Tim is, Tim's special skill. Tim's special skill is that he figures out like, he deconstructs the system before he does anything. So he figures out like, what actually moves the needle, what actually works, what the logic of the world that he's operating in. And then he's like, where do I have an advantage? What are people not taking advantage of? You know, and he does all of that. So like, I'll give you an example. He's also to blame slash the beneficiary for me on all the stuff that I've done. Like my, my, my first couple of books came out and they did all right. But then I remember I was, we were both at this conference in Amsterdam and I was working on The Obstacle's Way. And I gave him the, I was like, he's like, what are you working on? I'm like, I'm working on this book

• 1:26:31Speaker 01

  about Stoic philosophy. Cause he and I both were really into it. And he was like, let me read it. And so I gave it to him and he was like, let me buy this. I was like, what do you mean? It's already sold to a publisher. And he's like, no, let me buy the audiobook rights. This was in 2013, before audio was like, before Audible was huge. And Tim was like, let me buy the audiobook rights. And I think he bought the audiobook rights from my publisher for like $5,000. And, um,

• 1:27:00Speaker 01

  and my publisher was like, absolutely not. Uh, you know, terrible idea. We want to do it. Or it's either that, or they didn't even care. But I remember being, and I was like, just let Tim do whatever he wants. He knows what he's doing. And obviously my agent, uh, sort of brokered it all because he works with both of us. Tim buys the audiobook rights. He, I think on the fourth episode on the, on the podcast, I think he launched it to promote this audiobook publishing arm that he did. He basically just went and bought the audiobook rights to a bunch of his favorite books, knowing audiobooks were going to be huge. And then more importantly, he also knew that Audible paid like a 50% referral bonus for any new subscriber to Audible. So he knew like, not only

• 1:27:45Speaker 01

  was he recommending a book that he owned the rights to, but if you joined Audible for doing it, he got like a huge cut of your like commission. So, so he works all this out. And I mean, the audiobook of The Obstacle's Way sold hundreds of thousands of copies. And he bought the, then I think my next two also. But what Tim realizes, he was like, basically,

• 1:28:06Speaker 01

  I'm blowing people up on my blog. He was like, I'll just take a stake in the things.

• 1:28:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:12Speaker 01

  And, and so he, he just did that. And he, every, every time, I remember at South by Southwest, Twitter launched, like that was the year that Twitter launched.

• 1:28:21Jocko Willink?

  What year was that?

• 1:28:22Speaker 01

  Two thousand and seven. And I was like, this is the dumbest idea in the world. And Tim invested in it. So Tim, Tim has an eye for whatever. It's gonna be huge. And he, he, he figures out like what resources are under exploited or undervalued. And that's even his investing, like, obviously, he's a big investor, but he also realized like angel investing is the most efficient way to invest. Cause you don't put in a large amount of money. And so he was able, and he also understood, I think there's a little bit of status arbitrage there, that like, he was, he, he's just a genius at figuring out where stuff's going and he gets in very early. And that's why, I mean, that's why it's huge.

• 1:29:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. He told me to sign up for Twitter. And he's, he said, hey, you really should go on Twitter. It's a great way to get information. It's a great way to meet people and all this and get connections with people that you wouldn't otherwise connect with. And he, and I said, well, I don't know how to do it. And he's like, don't worry. I'll show you. I'll show you how to work it. And I'll show you. I'll, I'll, I'll work you through it. And he, I signed up for it. He never told me a damn thing about it, but I figured it out.

• 1:29:27Speaker 01

  I mean, he was early on podcasts. He was early on social. He's been, but he did tell me, he's like, it's, you don't have to be first. You just have to be early. So he lets people kind of figure it out. He, he, like, there's been very few where Tim has been wrong. Do you know what I mean? Like, like he doesn't, he's not like, he's not just like picking a thousand horses and some of them win. He, he, he waits till just, it's like just sure enough. And then he dives in and jumps in with two feet. And, and then he fucking crushes it.

• 1:29:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, he told me to start up on a cast too. Like as soon, he pressed stop on the recorder. I remember we were at his, at his house in, in San Francisco at the time, or, and he pressed stop. And he looks at me, he said, you should start a podcast. And I was like, Okay.

• 1:30:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:13Jocko Willink?

  You know, and then Rogan told me the same thing, but it was, it was Tim just like press stop, looked at me and said, you should start a podcast and you know, like, thank God he told me that because I listened to him.

• 1:30:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's pretty wild. So you're doing, so you had helped with his marketing on all of his books.

• 1:30:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:31Jocko Willink?

  And then you start with The Obstacle to Wait. Now, how long had you been into Stoicism for?

• 1:30:37Speaker 01

  I found Stoicism before I dropped out of college. So it was, I, when The Obstacle to Wait came out, that would have been 2014. So, yeah, a while.

• 1:30:45Jocko Willink?

  What was the, what was the connection to it?

• 1:30:49Speaker 01

  I read Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, which is just, I think, one of the most incredible and unique historical documents to ever exist.

• 1:30:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's amazing.

• 1:30:56Speaker 01

  Right? Like, the most powerful man in the world, maybe the wisest man in the world at that time, is writing private notes to himself on campaign with the Roman army about what he needs to do to be better as a human being and as a leader and, and to not be corrupted by the power that he holds. And he never intends it for publication. And somehow, against all odds, like 20 centuries later, we can read it.

• 1:31:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:26Speaker 01

  It's, it's a miracle. I mean, it's just, and there's nothing in, every one of my books and your books, we're writing, there's some performative element for it, right? Like, there's some, it's not false, but there is something in it where you're writing for the reader. What's so raw and authentic about Meditations is that it's for him.

• 1:31:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It's interesting. I've been asked since the first, probably five, within five podcasts, and I'm on 394 right now, people are like, oh, are you going to cover Marcus Aurelius's Meditations? And, and there's actually a legitimate, what I think is a legitimate reason why I haven't done it.

• 1:32:00Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:32:00Jocko Willink?

  The legitimate reason is, if you read public, if you read Meditations, you need no further explanation. There's, I could read them to you, but I have nothing else to say. Really, about every one of the statements and you go, yeah, that stands on its own. And this stands on its own, and this stands on its own. And that's why I've never taken the time, I suppose I will at some point, just maybe have a conversation around, around it, but it is so self-evident, what he is saying in there. Maybe it's because of what you just said, maybe because it's not performed, if it doesn't take any, it doesn't take any discussion to uncover anything else, it is what it is.

• 1:32:39Speaker 01

  Well, that's what, what's interesting about Stoicism is like, Stoicism has been this philosophical tradition for twenty-three hundred or so years. That some of the wisest, smartest, most powerful people used, it was wildly, wildly popular in the ancient world. Why is it not more popular in academic life, right? And the answer, I think, is that it's hard to specialize in the study of Stoicism as a philosopher at Harvard or whatever, because it's all fucking there.

• 1:33:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:07Speaker 01

  You know, it's, there's no theories about what Marcus was thinking, or did he mean this? It's like, he said what he means.

• 1:33:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:14Speaker 01

  And it's so boiled down and stripped of artifice or pretension, like there's no paradoxes or like, the only paradox is that sometimes he says this, and sometimes he says that, right? And people go, does he contradicting himself? And it's like, to a practical, regular person, you go, sometimes you do this, and sometimes you do that, right? Like, it, it, it's just so simple and accessible and real. Like, they weren't like, how do we know if we're not living in a simulation or not? Or like, how do we know if, if there's such thing as good or, or evil, right? Like, it's just, it's just practical, real shit about what it is to be a person in a world where the vast majority of what happens is outside your control.

• 1:33:59Jocko Willink?

  Did you, so you read it in high school?

• 1:34:03Speaker 01

  I read it my freshman year of college.

• 1:34:06Jocko Willink?

  Did you start to apply them in your own life?

• 1:34:11Speaker 01

  Obviously somewhat hit or miss. Uh, I think, I think, I think what struck me at nineteen was like, the passage about getting out of bed early in the morning. You know, like in, in the opening of book five in Meditations, he's like, at dawn when you awake. And then he interrupts himself and he goes,

• 1:34:29Speaker 01

  But it's warmer here. And he goes, is this what you were put here on this planet to do to huddle under the covers and stay warm? Like, the most powerful man in the world is having a debate with himself about whether he should get up early or not. And so I think that strikes you if you're a human, right? Like, you're like, that's me, you know, maybe not you, but.

• 1:34:47Jocko Willink?

  I've said the same thing. And this is another thing that's been interesting for me. So you and I, once again, we were talking before we hit record. I didn't read, like, when I was growing up, I was a, I was a, I was a knuckle dragger. I was not, you know, my, my mom was an English teacher, my dad was a history teacher, my, you know, they were, my mom read all the time, my dad read seven newspapers a day. They were just very into reading. They were teachers, you know, that's what they did. And I was not. I don't know, I can't think of any books that I actually read in high school. And I don't think I actually read any books in high school. I might have read one or two,

• 1:35:29Jocko Willink?

  you know, for some English class or something like this. And I apologize to my English teachers that I didn't, didn't do it. But I just wasn't into it. I was gonna go in the military. I was, you know, I just, it just didn't seem to be something that I needed to get done.

• 1:35:45Jocko Willink?

  In fact, at one point, my mom was, was, I was already in the Navy, and it was probably like, you know, like, a year into, maybe two years into the Navy. And my mom says, like, oh, have you read any good books lately? And I said, well, no. I said, why would I need to read a book? She's, well, that might be interesting. I said, if it's interesting, they'll make it into a movie. And she said, well, what if they don't make it in a movie? And I said, if they don't make it into a movie, it wasn't that interesting. That's how much of an idiot I was. It wasn't until I went to, it was, so, so then, as I was moving up through the ranks in the SEAL teams, and I eventually realized how important writing was. And so I started focusing on it. And, and I also started

• 1:36:25Jocko Willink?

  reading military history books, like, 100% solely nothing else, because I could relate to it, because I was like, oh, this is about war. This is what my life is supposed to be like. And then when I went to college, I knew that becoming a good Good writer would really help the guys that worked for me because you've got to write awards for them. You've got to write evaluations for them. It's you've got to write concept of operations like you write all the time. If you're an officer in the in the military and so I wanted to get good at it and that's why I studied English. And then I started to read and then I started to read all the time and and I remember when I was in college, you know, I one semester I took five English classes because I was an English major. It was horrible.

• 1:37:06Jocko Willink?

  But I mean, that's, you know, I'd be reading for eight hours and I also contrary to high school when I was in college. And I was in, I went to college after I'd been in the Navy for eight years. So I was a grown adult human. I would read, I read every single assignment that I got a hundred percent like I read every single page of every single assignment that I ever got in college, which is, I don't think, I don't think there's very many people at all that do that. And I don't even know if it was that smart, but that's what I did. So I started reading all the time then, but like when I started the podcast and I started getting interviewed and I'd get people asking me about, you know, philosophy. I remember I was on stage one time and a guy said, who is your, you know, of all of all philosophers, who's your favorite philosopher?

• 1:37:48Jocko Willink?

  And my answer, I said, Lemmy, you know, of Motorhead, because I just didn't, I didn't, I didn't have it. And as people started saying, oh, Jocko's writing is, is, you know, it's very stoic writing. And even what you're just talking about getting out of bed in the morning, I've written about that a ton of times and it's all the same. But I didn't know. Yeah. And eventually I did a podcast about it because, you know, it's like, oh, you talk about the same thing that Sun Tzu and the same thing that Marcus Aurelius. And well, if you put a human into certain environments like war or leadership positions. And they look around and they, they make some mistakes and they learn from it. They make some other mistakes and they learn from it.

• 1:38:28Jocko Willink?

  Eventually you're going to get to some place that's it's, it's a normal place to end up. And that's kind of where I ended up. And then I looked around and said, oh, my gosh, you know, like these guys have been talking about this for so long. I wish I, I wish I would have included on that when I was younger, but of, but that's where you end up. You end up saying, oh, Discipline equals freedom. I, I, I said, discipline equals freedom for the first time. I remember I'd brief it to these junior officers. This is like circa 2007, 2008. I couldn't have told you one thing about Stoicism. And yet I, I wrote, I would tell these guys, if you want freedom in your job, in your life, you need to have discipline. You know, maybe I got some of it from, uh, from Black Flag, Henry Rollins,

• 1:39:13Jocko Willink?

  because I grew up, you know, listening to, listening to Black Flag and hearing Henry Rollins talk about discipline. But I realized, oh yeah, that discipline that he's talking about, if you apply it to your life, you'll end up with freedom in your life. And discipline equals freedom. This is, and I, then I realized, oh, it applies to your team too. Like if you have a disciplined platoon, they're going to be able to operate with much more, with, with much more hands off and they can make things happen quicker. So it was very interesting to me to kind of arrive at a place that is, it's where you're going to end up. It's where you're going to end up if you get put into war, you get put into leadership positions, you make some mistakes, you learn from them, you put, you make some other mistakes,

• 1:39:54Jocko Willink?

  you learn from them, you live a life, it's, it's where you hopefully end up.

• 1:40:01Speaker 01

  I think this is why Stoicism and Buddhism, for instance, have so many similarities is that if you boil the human condition, the human experience, if you boil history down enough times, you're not left with that much. You're left with basically this idea that we don't control what happens, but we control how we respond to what happens. And that these events are opportunities to, to like be great, to be excellent, right? Uh, and that, that's like the core, that's the core of it. And I think that's what struck me reading Marcus really is for the first time is like, when people hear philosophy, they think impractical, they think theoretical, they think abstract, they think incomprehensible, right? They think like a college professor talking about interesting ideas,

• 1:40:44Speaker 01

  but that, that don't do anything but confuse you. And then you read meditations or you read Seneca or you read Epictetus and they're like, life is fucking hard. Here's what you can do about it. Like here, like, uh, don't lose your temper, try to be a good person, you know? Epictetus is, is asked to basically boil all of Stoicism down as simply as possible. And he says, I can do it in two words. Well, it's actually three, but he says I can do it in basically two terms. Persist, resist, some things you need to keep doing and some things you need to stop doing. Right? Like, that's it. It's not that complicated, right? And this is why the golden rule appears in all the different religious traditions. It's like, there's not that much stuff. It's so it really just comes down to like, who can say it the most clearly?

• 1:41:29Speaker 01

  And then who or which tradition does a good job of living up to it? Right? Like, and that's what I think so interesting about Marcus Aurelius. He's the most powerful man in the world, literally worshipped as a god, commands the Roman army, has unlimited wealth, and, you know, this is supposed to corrupt absolutely. He has the absolute power. Like, it's not that power corrupts. It's that absolute power corrupts absolutely. And then you kind of have this exception to the rule. And he writes about it in Meditations. He goes, "Be careful not to become Caesarified and not to be stained purple," because the Roman emperor wears a purple cloak. And it's like, oh, yeah, maybe it didn't happen for him

• 1:42:11Speaker 01

  because he was meditating in his journal about making sure that that didn't happen. Like, he was, he was working on it. And philosophy was a way to do that. He also writes in Meditation, he says, "Fight to be the person that philosophy tried to make you into." And it's like, oh, yeah, this is like a pep talk from, this is a pep talk he's having with himself about living up to his potential as a virtuous person that he's almost certainly struggling to in the midst of frustrating, annoying, obnoxious life.

• 1:42:46Jocko Willink?

  So, 2014, you, you write, "The Obstacle is the Way." Here's a, here's a section from that. "In the year 170, at night in his tent on the front lines of the war in Germania, Marcus Aurelius, the emperor of the Roman Empire, sat down to write, or perhaps it was before dawn at the palace in Rome, or he stole a few seconds to himself during the games, ignoring the carnage on the floor of the Colosseum below. The exact location is not important. What matters is that this man, known today as the last of the five good emperors, sat down to write, not to an audience for publication, but to himself, for himself. And what he wrote is undoubtedly..." One of history's most effective formulas for overcoming every negative situation we may

• 1:43:31Jocko Willink?

  encounter in life, a formula for thriving, not just in spite of whatever happens, but because of it. At that moment, he wrote only a paragraph, only a little of it was original. Almost every thought could in some form or another be found in the writings of his mentors and idols, but in a scant eighty-five words, Marcus Aurelius so clearly defined and articulated a timeless idea that he eclipses the great names of those who came before him. It is more than enough for us. Quote, "Our actions may be impeded, but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions, because we can accommodate and adapt.

• 1:44:13Jocko Willink?

  The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting." And then he concluded with the powerful words destined for maxim. Quote, "The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way." In Marcus's words, in Marcus's words, the secret to an art unknown as turning obstacles upside down, to act with a reverse clause, so there's always a way out or another route to get where you need to go, so that setbacks or problems are always expected and never permanent, making certain that what impedes us can empower us.

• 1:44:55Jocko Willink?

  And then you go on to say, "There are a few things to keep in mind when faced with a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. We must try to be objective, to control emotions and keep an even keel, to choose to see the good in a situation, to steady our nerves, to ignore what disturbs or limits others, to place things in perspective, to revert to the, to the present moment, to focus on what can be controlled. This is how you see opportunity within the obstacle. It does not happen on its own. It is a process, one that results from self-discipline and logic. And that logic is available to you, you just need to deploy it."

• 1:45:35Jocko Willink?

  The obstacle is the way.

• 1:45:37Speaker 01

  That was very cool to be honest.

• 1:45:40Jocko Willink?

  This is, you know, one of my, I think it might be the most popular clip I've ever made is this clip from the podcast called Good, right? And I'm telling a story about, this is something that I was saying, again, before I had any recognition of any of this stuff, I was telling my junior platoon commander, Seth Stone, hey, something's going wrong. Good. Now we have an opportunity to overcome it. And all, there it is, you know, it's like, there it is. It's no wonder people relate to it. It's one of those things that's been boiled down over time and it's just true.

• 1:46:09Speaker 01

  When we can imagine that he knew it from experience, you know, it's like, hey, we just found out this, we just received news of this setback, or this person just defected, or, you know, this person just died, right? He's, he's, the emperor would be, nobody brings good news to the emperor, right? It's just gonna be bad news after bad news, especially for Marcus's reign. It's, it's kind of tragic. You have this philosopher king, he inherits the throne from a man named Antoninus Pius. There's basically 20 years of peace and prosperity, and then Marcus's reign, there's a plague, the Antonine Plague, there's a series of historic floods, almost the entire,

• 1:46:49Speaker 01

  almost the entire reign of Marcus Rios's time is at war, a series of border skirmishes, and he buries six children. Like, it's one thing after another for this guy. And, and it's not that it's good, right? Like, that he would have chosen it, that he was happy that it happened, but it was an opportunity for him to deploy the ideas in Stoicism. You know what I mean? Like, I think when people hear the obstacle is the way, it's like, oh, this is gonna be great for my business. Like, no, your business might just barely survive, right? Or it might go out of business, but it can be good for you as a human being. You can learn something from it, you can grow stronger from

• 1:47:29Speaker 01

  it, you can practice forgiveness or acceptance. Like, like when we say that everything's an opportunity, yeah, a good chunk of the time, the opportunity is like humility, or acceptance, or learning from your mistakes. It's not magically. A springboard to exactly where you want it to go like sometimes life fucking kicks you in the chest like a thousand times and and and when we say the obstacle is the way it's that it's an opportunity to practice virtue and excellence inside that shittiness.

• 1:48:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I've had to I've had to brief quite a few people on that over the years in terms of taking ownership of things. Yeah. And they think, oh, well, well, you said if I take ownership, you know, it wouldn't be a problem. It's like, no, you did something wrong. You have to take ownership. That doesn't mean the problem went away. You still have to solve the problem or or fix the problem or say you're sorry and make amends and do things to win back the trust that you broke. Like, yeah, all that starts with ownership. Ownership doesn't make problems go away. They just, uh, it just is a place to start.

• 1:48:29Speaker 01

  When a lot of times ownership as a leader is owning shit that's not your fault. You didn't screw up. You didn't choose to be to for it to happen in this moment that you just sunk your life savings into something and then a pandemic happens or, you know, there's a strike or some, you know, like you don't choose any of that, but it's still like, it's your fucking problem. And and you you have to go, well, how is this problem gonna make me better?

• 1:48:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And I've always we've had a very interesting experiences, you know, we'll work with companies. We work with companies, a consulting company called Eslam Front. We have a bunch of companies that we work with. Most of the time, it's probably gone up. I used to say 80% or 85% of the time. Now it's probably 95% of the time we'll work with companies that actually are doing well and they just want to do better. And they bring us on to help them with their leadership. 5% of the time, we're getting brought in by some external component, like, let's say, the board.

• 1:49:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:27Jocko Willink?

  Who says, hey, this company is failing. Can you go help them? Can you get their leadership in order? And the reception that we get in the 95% of companies that are doing well is like, hey, we're so happy you're here. We want to learn from you. And the reason that they're doing well is because they're humble enough to say, when the market shifts, they go, oh, we didn't judge that. Well, here's an adjustment we can make. Or the competitor did this and they didn't expect it. So now they got to counter that by doing this move and they admit that they got, you know, the competitor got a one up on them. When the board brings us in because the company's failing. Their reaction is like, "Well, we're only failing because the competitor did this, and the market did that, and the union said this, and our investors did that." It's never their fault. That's why they're failing, because they don't change anything,

• 1:50:12Jocko Willink?

  because they don't think it's their fault. So, when you're in a leadership position, it actually is your fault. It actually is your fault when something goes wrong, and you didn't plan for it, you didn't predict it, you didn't have a backup, you didn't have a contingency. It's your fault. And by the way, that means you have the ability to say, "Okay, I made a bad call. Here's where I thought it was gonna happen. This is what actually happened, and here's the adjustments we're gonna make." So, letting your ego blame other people is a complete disaster and doesn't work.

• 1:50:40Speaker 01

  One of the most beautiful passages in Meditations, at the beginning, Marcus lists his debts and lessons, like what he learned from all the people in his life. And he has this, he becomes emperor in kind of a remarkable process, right? Like, his dad is not emperor. He comes from no royal family. It's that Hadrian, there's basically five male emperors in Rome that don't have a son, or in some cases, any children. And so, Hadrian is getting old, and he sees something in this boy, Marcus Aurelius, who is sort of unfailingly honest and decent, and he wants him to become king, but he's way too young, and he thinks that's the worst thing you could possibly do to someone. So, he adopts this guy, Antoninus, who was like one of the most respected politicians in Rome.

• 1:51:25Speaker 01

  And actually, what seals it for Hadrian is he watches, Antoninus doesn't think anyone's watching, and he watches Antoninus help his elderly father-in-law up a flight of stairs. And he goes, "This guy is it." So, he adopts Antoninus, who in turn has to adopt Marcus Aurelius. So, he sets in motion this succession plan. And Hadrian probably thinks, you know, Antoninus will live for like five or six years, and then Marcus will... Well, Antoninus lives for like almost two and a half decades after that. And it's one of the longest-running emperors, just that alone. So, Marcus gets like 20-plus years of apprenticeship under a great man. And it goes both ways. I mean, like, Antoninus could have very quickly killed Marcus Aurelius,

• 1:52:09Speaker 01

  that's what you might expect to happen, or Marcus Aurelius could have tried to kill. But instead, they decide like, "No, let's really do this. Like, I wanna learn from you. I wanna teach you." And they have this beautiful relationship. And in the beginning of Meditations, Marcus lists all the things that he learns from Antoninus. And it's one of the most beautiful encapsulations of what makes a great human being and a great leader. He's like, he teaches me how to, when to listen to experts, when to seed the floor, how to be unostentatious. How he, he, he even learns, he's like, Antoninus would plan his bathroom breaks so that he could be more efficient at the job. You know, he just lit all the stuff that he just learns from this great man.

• 1:52:52Speaker 01

  And, and you get the sense that Marcus, when he does become power and suddenly there's no check on him whatsoever. The main thing is he doesn't want to let this guy down. He doesn't, he wants to follow in the tradition that he was raised in. And it's just this, it's this beautiful, again, totally unique historical situation of which Marcus adds a cherry on top. So Marcus gets a stepbrother as a result of this. And he names his stepbrother co-Emperor. The first thing he does with absolute power is he gives half of it away, which again has never happened and will probably never happen again.

• 1:53:31Speaker 01

  And, and it's just, I mean, there's just so much, there's so much you can study from this person. And yeah, I'm just, I remain endlessly fat, even all these years later, just every time I think about it, every time I pick it, every time I pick up meditation, I get something else out of it. I'm like, oh, how did, you know, how did you know? Even, even, um, even during COVID, like, I didn't really think of meditations as a plague book. But he wrote it during a 15 year plague that soldiers brought back from the eastern edges of the empire. So it sounds a little familiar, right? And he goes, he's, there's two types of plagues. There's one that can take your life. And he's like, that's pretty bad.

• 1:54:15Speaker 01

  And then he's like, one that can destroy your character. And he's like, that's the worst one. And you just realize like, oh shit, humans were exactly the same during COVID as they were during the Antonine plague and always have been, always will be. And that's what, that's what's so cool about philosophy is like the timelessness of it. Or that, yeah, ego is basically the plot of every Greek play and tragedy. Flash forward to every superhero movie, like it's just ego. That's the main thing.

• 1:54:46Jocko Willink?

  What was your, as you're working at American Apparel? How did your stoic philosophy line up to like this mayhem that's going on there?

• 1:54:55Speaker 01

  Well, I think just generally a philosophy of like discipline, ethics and, and like

• 1:55:02Speaker 01

  trying to be a decent person. I think that, that, that, that kept me out of trouble. So did, so did being effectively married. But I think watching someone who had not absolute power, but just watching the way that wealth and power and busyness and and all that, just watching the way that can warp someone's soul.

• 1:55:24Speaker 01

  It's pretty, it's pretty timeless and real and also super scary. You know, to watch someone that picked like Dove saw me and was like, I see something of myself in you. And then to watch him spin off the planet, that was, that was a real head fuck.

• 1:55:42Jocko Willink?

  When I introduce the, the topic of ego and I'm talking to companies and people.

• 1:55:49Jocko Willink?

  I talk about what a threat it is. And then I explain that there's countless examples throughout military history where someone's ego drove them to make decisions that got thousands, if not tens of thousands of people killed. And in many cases themselves killed. So they would rather die than admit that they were wrong, rather die than then subordinate their ego to someone else, rather die than change their plan because it's the plan they came up with. And I say, listen, if people will die for their ego, trust me, you can, you can like overrule someone because you don't, you don't like the way they looked at you and that's all ego. So that's, that's a scary thing.

• 1:56:30Speaker 01

  I mean, MacArthur was this close to World War III, this close. And that's not a new, I mean, he was, he had the same job as so many of the Roman generals who did this exact same thing. Right? Like the, the overreaching is, is the thing. There's a great Epictetus quote, he says, "Remember, it is impossible to learn that which you think you already know." So on the, on the one hand, there's, there's the ego of, of the overreach of the like super talented egotist. But we we forget all the sort of silent casualties of ego who we never hear of. Because they never got like they just got fired like on their first day. Or they never graduated from like they never made it because like.

• 1:57:13Speaker 01

  Nobody could teach them what they thought they already knew. Like we think of the egotistical rock star like destroying their career. But what about the one that blew up the record deal before it was even signed? Because they're just a dick.

• 1:57:25Jocko Willink?

  I was once again talked about ego when we would fire a SEAL leader from a leadership position. We would fire a SEAL leader not because they didn't know how to read a map. Not because they didn't know how to shoot their weapon. We'd fire them because their ego, because they lack humility. And when you lack humility, you don't listen to anybody else. You you're just gonna you're just gonna implode and it's it's absolutely terrible. And I also tell people. You look, everyone's got some natural amount of leadership capability. Different levels, different skill sets. Some people are good at simplifying things. Some people are very articulate. Some people have a loud voice and a commanding presence. Like, oh, let's get different levels of those. And any of those, you can get better in those categories. You can improve in some way. Unless you're. An egomaniac or you lack humility.

• 1:58:08Jocko Willink?

  And then then I really just can't help you like you're just gonna be a terrible person and a terrible leader. And you're not ever gonna get any better because you don't listen to anybody else and you think you're perfect. So going back to Epictetus, you can't I can't teach you anything if you already think you know it. You're just screwed.

• 1:58:21Speaker 01

  Well, it's like if you think you know everything, you're right. Because you can't learn anything else. And if you think you're perfect, you also can't get any better.

• 1:58:28Jocko Willink?

  It was so weird to deal with guys with big egos. And look, in in the SEAL teams, you've got a lot of healthy egos, myself included. Like you're not, you don't sign up and go do the the quote hardest training in the world. Because you don't think you can make it. No, you're like, I'll do this, let's go. But then you roll in with some of these guys and you you can just see the look on their face. And doesn't matter, sometimes they're senior to you, sometimes they're junior to you. It doesn't matter. You're looking at them and you can see that what you're saying, they they do not think they need this information. And they know better than you. And and so you go, okay, well, maybe it's my ego. And you say, okay, well, explain your perspective. And you realize that they their perspective is the only thing in the world to them. And they end up getting fired. That's the way it works. It's terrible.

• 1:59:12Speaker 01

  I've gotten to work with a lot of sports teams, I know you have too. And that they all talk about like you're the best in the world until you got here. And so that's, you know, and then can you do you have? If you have confidence, you can become good again. If you have ego. You will get destroyed because now all of a sudden you're getting your ass kicked. You don't know what you're doing. It doesn't feel natural. Like, Shaka Smart, he's a great basketball coach at Marquette. He was talking about how people go, like, they always quit. The players always quit because it's not fun anymore. And he's like, the game is the exact same amount of fun. You just don't like not being good, right? Like, you don't like the learning curve. That's what you're objecting to. And, and the realization that, like, life and progress is this constant process

• 1:59:57Speaker 01

  of bumping up into your limitations and the things you don't know. And if you like that, and you get better from that, then you keep growing. And if you're the person for whom that struggle is immensely painful and uncomfortable, and it threatens your identity and self-worth as an, as a human being, you're fucked. You're totally fucked.

• 2:00:19Jocko Willink?

  Eagle is the enemy. Let me get a little excerpt going from here. In 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower returned from his inaugural parade and entered the White House for the first time as president late in the evening. As he walked into the executive mansion, his chief usher handed Eisenhower two letters marked confidential and secret that had been sent to him earlier in the day. Eisenhower's reaction was swift. "Never bring me a sealed envelope," he said firmly. "That's what I have staff for." How snobbish, right? Had the office really gone to his head already? Not at all. Eisenhower recognized the seemingly insignificant event for what it was, a symptom of disorganized, dysfunctional organization.

• 2:01:02Jocko Willink?

  Not everything needed to run through him. Who is to say that the envelope was even important? Why hadn't anyone screened it? As president, his first priority in office was organizing the executive branch into a smooth, functioning, and order-driven unit, just like his military units had been, not because he didn't want to work himself, but because everyone had a job and he trusted and empowered them to do it. As his chief of staff later put it, "The president does the most important things. I do the next most important things." The public image of Eisenhower is of a man playing golf. In reality, he was not someone who ever slacked off, but the leisure time he did have was available because he ran a tight ship. He knew that urgent and important were not

• 2:01:45Jocko Willink?

  symptoms. He, his job was to set the priorities, to think big picture, and then trust the people beneath him to do the jobs they were hired for. Most of us are not the president, or even president of a company. But moving up the ladder in life, the system and work habits that got us where we are, won't necessarily keep us there. When we're aspiring or small time, we can be idiosyncratic, we can compensate for disorganization with hard work and a little luck, that's not going to cut it in the majors. In fact, it'll sink you if you can't grow up and organize. We can contrast Eisenhower's system in the White House with the infamous car company created by John Delorean. When he walked

• 2:02:30Jocko Willink?

  away from GM to produce his brand of futuristic cars, a few decades removed from the company's spectacular implosion, we can be forgiven for thinking the man was just ahead of his time. In fact, his rise and fall is as timeless a story as there is. Power-hungry narcissist undermines his own vision and loses millions of dollars of other people's money in the process. Delorean was convinced that the culture of order and discipline at GM had held brilliant creatives like himself down. When he sat down, when he set out to found his company, he deliberately did everything differently, flouting conventional wisdom and business practices. The result was not the freewheeling creative sanctuary that Delorean naively envisioned. It was instead,

• 2:03:14Jocko Willink?

  an overbearingly political, dysfunctional, and even corrupt organization that collapsed under its own weight, eventually resorting to criminality and fraud and losses of some 250 million. The Delorean failed both as a car and as a company because it was mismanaged from top to bottom with an emphasis on the mismanagement at the top by the top. That is, Delorean himself was the problem. Compared to Eisenhower, he worked constantly with different results, with very different results. As one executive put it, Delorean had the ability to recognize a good opportunity, but he didn't know how to make it happen. Another executive described his management style as chasing colored balloons. He was constantly distracted and abandoning one

• 2:03:56Jocko Willink?

  project for another. He was a genius. Sadly, that's rarely enough.

• 2:04:02Jocko Willink?

  Though probably not on purpose, DeLorean created a culture in which ego ran free, convinced that continued success was simply his by right. He seemed to bristle at concepts like discipline, organization, or strategic planning. Employees were not given enough direction and then at other times overwhelmed with trivial instructions. DeLorean couldn't delegate except to lackeys who blind, whose blind loyalty was prized over competence or skill. On top of all this, he was often late or preoccupied. Executives were allowed to work on extracurricular activities on the company dime, encouraged specifically to chase side projects that benefited their boss at the expense of the company.

• 2:04:45Jocko Willink?

  As CEO, DeLorean often bent the truth to investors, fellow officers, and suppliers, and this habit was contagious throughout the company. Like many people, driven by a demon, DeLorean's decisions were motivated by everything but what should, what would have been efficient, manageable, or responsible. Instead of improving or fixing GM's system, it's as if he threw out order altogether. What ensued was chaos in which no one followed the rules, no one was accountable, and very little got done. The only reason it didn't collapse immediately was that DeLorean was a master of public relations, a skill that held the whole story together until the first faulty cars came off the assembly line.

• 2:05:27Jocko Willink?

  Not surprisingly, the cars were terrible, they didn't work, cost per unit was massively over budget, they hadn't secured enough dealers, they couldn't deliver cars to the ones they had, the launch was a disaster, DeLorean Motor Company never recovered. It turns out that becoming a great leader is difficult. Who knew?

• 2:05:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, classic. And it's classic, you know, when I just talked about discipline equals freedom from a just personal perspective, but then also inside of an organization. If you have an undisciplined organization, you end up with this where nothing can happen, nothing can get done, no one knows what direction we're going, it's just total chaos.

• 2:06:02Speaker 01

  You think it'd be fun to get to do whatever you want, and it's the worst thing you could possibly wish on someone. And a good chunk of what I was writing about there was obviously what I just saw at American Apparel. Like, we have this, again, this idea of the leader doing everything, being everywhere, being always accessible. Like, I remember when I first got there... Dove said something about how, you know, he had an open door policy. Any employee could call him at any time and he would answer. And I remember thinking like, that's how it should be done. And then with time, and I saw it firsthand, you go, wait, you've got 250 stores in 20 countries, got 12,000 employees. You always have someone awake with a problem in some time zone.

• 2:06:44Speaker 01

  And so he'd get woken up from a dead sleep because some store manager in Korea didn't think they were getting enough overtime. And, you know, so he's, he's, he's not able to not only take care of himself as a human being, but he has no ability to see big picture. He doesn't realize he's making these massive strategic mistakes because what he thinks he's doing, he's giving himself credit for all these tactical corrections he's making, all these problems he's solving. He doesn't realize he's getting further and further off course. And so you end up, I remember Robert Greene told me this distinction once between strategic heaven and tactical hell. And egotism is a good way to get stuck or sucked into tactical hell.

• 2:07:28Speaker 01

  You think you're busy and you are the center of everything, but you're not getting anything done.

• 2:07:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and it's very gratifying as well because you're solving problems and people are praising you that you got this done. Oh, you got the, the new cash register order for that store in South Korea. Great, you did a great job. They're going to get delivered tomorrow and you're, you're hailed because of it. Meanwhile, you know, three quarters away, you haven't ordered the material that you need to get the job done.

• 2:07:52Speaker 01

  I remember I looked out of the window one time at my office, I stared, and he's directing traffic in the parking lot. And again, this seems like, this seems like a humble, like roll up shirt sleeves, do anything leader. And there is a place sometimes for that, especially almost like it's a showmanship, like watch me, you know, you want the CEO of Uber to sometimes drive an Uber and get a sense of what it is. But Dove was doing it because he had passed something on the way in and it bothered him. And instead of having competent staff, the way that an officer would, that goes, you need to fix this right now. When I come back downstairs, this better have gone away. He's doing it himself. And what he's doing is taking his eye off the ball.

• 2:08:35Speaker 01

  And again, he likes the image and the image is cool, but the reality is if the CEO is not thinking big picture, no, someone else can direct traffic, but no one can do what you do. And that, that requires a certain discipline. It also requires

• 2:08:52Speaker 01

  An acceptance of some things not being the way that you want them to be. That's the hard thing.

• 2:08:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's a certain level. I just was talking this with some clients. There is a level of risk with decentralized command. That the the traffic. Look, I'm like, hey, Ryan, that traffic down there in the parking lot was terrible. You need to get that squared away. There's a chance that you're going to do something that's not quite what I would have done.

• 2:09:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:15Jocko Willink?

  And that's fine.

• 2:09:16Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:09:17Jocko Willink?

  That's fine. I often say that the best operations that we would go on in Iraq, I didn't have to say anything. Have to do anything. I'm the overall guy in charge, but I don't have to say anything because everyone knows what they're doing and they just make things happen, which is the way it should be. And I never had to like, if a guy did something wrong, I never had to correct that individual. The the the guys on the team would take care of it, which is exactly the way it should be.

• 2:09:45Jocko Willink?

  Isn't it crazy that a guy like Dove can be so talented? And and a genius, to use your words? And yet just not see these things which are so obvious. Right now to just about anybody that watches that arc of destruction unfold.

• 2:10:10Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, you see this in sports all the time. This is the most talented person in the world. And yet that's not why they're getting cut. That's not why Kyrie Irving is going from team to team to team, right? Like, it's obvious in two seconds what that dude's problem is, but he can't, you know, he can't fix it or he's not willing to fix it. And so, you know, I think sometimes like self-help or personal development stuff gets like a bad rap. But

• 2:10:36Speaker 01

  the willingness to work on oneself, to like, look at your problems in the mirror, to to focus on where they're. That's important work that not enough people do. And and it's not that egotistical people or people like Dove, it's not that they don't become successful. Dove still lives in a very large mansion, you know. Lots of successful people were horrible. They were shitty leaders. It's it's that it prevents them from doing the things that they could have done. And that that's like the shame of it. You know what I mean? Like it. Steve Jobs gets fired by Apple, deservedly so. Like, his comeback story is a result of his willingness to do work on himself. But like, you don't always get that second chance.

• 2:11:18Speaker 01

  Like, you think about, you have great people who pissed off their publisher, or their record label, or people who couldn't play well with others, and, you know, they end up depriving the world and themselves of stuff they could have done. And it's really sad, like, again, the invisible graveyard of things that could have been accomplished if people, like Shaq, Shaq has talked about the, the number of rings that he and Kobe could have won together, right? Or you look at the, the Brooklyn Nets, like, that was the greatest super team ever assembled, and they managed to be on the court together like 19 times. And, again, they're all very rich, all very successful, all clearly performing at an elite level, but there was some, some ceiling that they bumped into, that they could have broken

• 2:12:03Speaker 01

  through had they been able to listen to, you know, listen to the people around them.

• 2:12:10Jocko Willink?

  A huge part of that is having the ability to detach from yourself and take a look at what's happening. So, when you say like, self-help, would you say it's a bad rap or whatever? But, part of what you're gonna do in those situations is you're gonna take a step back and look at what you're doing.

• 2:12:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:28Jocko Willink?

  Which, if you're in a business, and the business isn't going well, and what you do to try and fix it is go deeper into it and, and close your blinders even more, you don't see the mistakes that you're actually making. I've been saying a lot, you, the, the solution to a problem isn't inside the problem. You won't, when you're in the problem, you don't see the solution. You have to get outside that problem. And when you're the problem, you have to get outside of yourself. You have to take a step back and look and say, okay, what am I actually doing right now? What mistakes am I making? And if your ego's out of control, this, this will just never happen. It will just never happen. You have to be humble enough to say, hey, there's some things that don't seem to be going very well right now, and I think I'm the person that's in charge, and this probably

• 2:13:13Jocko Willink?

  indicates that I'm making some mistakes, what can I do better right now? It seems like so obvious, and yet, there's countless stories, and, and, and this can happen on a large scale, like at American Apparel, or it can happen in a tiny scale, like, when someone's in a relationship with another human being, and they don't understand why the other person's frustrated, and it must be that other person. Without ever looking in the mirror going, maybe you act like an asshole sometimes.

• 2:13:42Speaker 01

  I just, um, I saw this interview with Sean Payton. I'm a Saints fan, so I'm sad that he left. But he, he was asked like, what's he gonna do about Russell Wilson, who had this terrible season, huge contract in Denver, terrible season. And he's like, what are you guys gonna do? And he's like, well, we're gonna break down what happened last season. We're gonna see the plays that went well. And then we're gonna do more of those plays. And then we're gonna look at the plays that didn't go well. We're gonna run fewer of those. And you're like, that's so basic, but that is, first off, that's getting to the outside of a problem. Right? Like, instead of just like forcing it, like, let's just do what we're doing, but we'll try harder. Right? Or we'll hope we'll get luckier, or we'll blame, you know, this or that or the other.

• 2:14:23Speaker 01

  It's, it's just like, let's step back and let's break down the film. This is why teams break down film. And that's why in the military, you debrief, you look at what worked and what didn't work. But then also, this is what coaches and consultants and team members and comrades and spouses, this is what they're like, hey, have you noticed this pattern here? Like, every time this happens, you do X. Is that? And then how does X go? Not well? Well, then why don't we try this instead, you know? And the ability, it's very hard to see yourself from the outside by definition. And so you have to cultivate a process, whether it's journaling, like that's what Marcus Aurelius is doing in meditations,

• 2:15:02Speaker 01

  or a therapist that you talk to, or a, a board of advisors, or a, you know, accountability partner, a coach, or whatever, that allows you to go, yeah, I'm getting in my own way here, like a lot. How do I stop doing it? And then, and this is what Dove didn't do, you have to listen to that advice. You have to actually do that stuff, which nobody wants to do.

• 2:15:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the, the idea of writing things down, because this is, this is something I always tell people to do. Um, and it's something that you got told when you were, you know, 16 years old and, hey, do you want to go to a summer camp? Or do you want to stay? And you, someone goes, oh, write down the list of pros and cons. And what you do is you, you are detaching from the problem, even if it's only for 18 inches away. But now you're looking at it on a piece of paper, when you have to write- Write down your thoughts. It makes them more clear and it makes you see, oh yeah, it looks like I should definitely stay here and get a job because I'm going to need money. That's going to be a better deal for me. Like making those decisions and detaching from them and writing them down. That's why even writing books for me, as I would write down debrief points for people.

• 2:16:05Jocko Willink?

  I'd write it down. I'd see, oh yeah, I can see this is a pattern here. I can see how I need to explain this better because they're not getting it. So writing things down is such a powerful tool because it de facto causes you to detach from the problem.

• 2:16:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a reason that almost all successful and creative people throughout history have had some kind of journaling practice. Right? Where they talk about how their day went, or how they want their day to go, or the ideas they're working on, or the things they're struggling with. Yeah, that that 18 inches, that might be, that might as well be 10,000 feet.

• 2:16:37Jocko Willink?

  Beautiful.

• 2:16:38Speaker 01

  It gives you so much distance and it's also so much better to vomit that out on the page rather than on other people. And once you articulate it, once you write it down, I mean, so many times I'm writing in my journal, I'm like, what? You know, that is, that is insane. That logic is not true at all. Or also you've written this up, like I'll notice like, I am writing how tired I am very regularly. Well, that's a solvable problem, right? And you, you, I obviously knew I was tired, but just the act of, of just seeing your thoughts is, that is the most basic philosophical practice that there is. And that's what, that's literally what the Stoics were doing.

• 2:17:15Jocko Willink?

  How did ego as an enemy do?

• 2:17:18Speaker 01

  Really good. Really good. It was funny. It was sort of a nice, so it comes out, it should have debuted at number one on the Wall Street Journalist. And somebody at my publisher made a mistake, like they, they entered it in the wrong category. Like they put it in philosophy, which there is no list for, instead of business, which we'd asked them for. So it would have debuted at number one. And so, you know, I opened the thing expecting the number ones, my agent told me the sales. And it's like, it's not only not number one, it's not there. And there's a chapter in the book about this idea that the effort has to be enough. That like you control the effort, you don't control external results, which is a very timeless Stoic idea. It's also in the Bhagavad.

• 2:17:56Jocko Willink?

  You had to refer to your own book.

• 2:17:57Speaker 01

  I was like, fuck. You know, right, because like, I knew I did a good job. I knew I sold the copies, which ultimately is what matters anyway, not this arbitrary list of where you rank against other people. Like, I know what the number is. And also, who the fuck cares about the first week? Like, tell me, is it still, you know, there's a Drake lyric, like, tell me who you're checking a decade from now? Like, the book is still selling, right? Like, that's what matters. It doesn't matter what you do in the first week. But, but it, again, like, what's so cool about Stoicism, about philosophy, is that it's for those problems. It's where you're like, someone made a mistake, it cost me something, but did it cost me something? Do I actually care about this thing? What does it actually mean to me?

• 2:18:40Speaker 01

  And then how do I process these emotions? Like, I think people think Stoicism is like, having no emotions. No, Stoicism is having the framework, the understanding of what really is important, what you really believe, and then it allows you to process those emotions. So instead of sending off the angry email, or, you know, like, putting my foot through the wall, I'm like, oh, yeah, this is a chance. This is a chance to practice what I was talking about, which I already knew, and I already have practiced, but it's more practice.

• 2:19:12Jocko Willink?

  I had, uh, my book, Discipline Equals Freedom, was coming out in 2017, in October, mid-October of 2017. And so I had gotten the pre-copies, like, like, copies of it at my house, and I had a big box of them. And I had the big media tour thing all scheduled. And my friend Seth died on September 30th, 2017. And so I, you know, canceled everything, but, but then, like, I was distraught, because my friend died. And I remember I had this book that I had written, and I have a section in the book about death. And I literally had

• 2:19:55Jocko Willink?

  to walk over to my own book and read that section to, to remind myself of how you get through this. And, and again, that's like, when we talk about writing stuff down, to...

• 2:20:12Jocko Willink?

  To distance yourself from it, but also like what you're saying, you know, you're pissed that you didn't get on the list the way you should have. And like, of course, you go back and like, read this section on that. And it's, it's the same thing. Sometimes you've gotta, you're, you gotta interrupt that emotional cycle that's going on and say, hey, here's, look at this from a distance. Here's what's going on. And, and that's why having books like these are, i- it's important to be able to refer back to them.

• 2:20:40Jocko Willink?

  Otherwise, y- y- you can get caught in these loops that are not healthy.

• 2:20:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, first off, I think writing is, is like a form of accountability. Publishing is a form of accountability. You're like, I said this and I sold it to people. So if someone catches me not doing it, that's, that's not a good look. So it forces you, I think, you're like, this is what I think. But then also, when you're writing, I mean, it's not, it is you, but it's also you channeling something bigger and more timeless than you. Like, you didn't invent it. You discovered it and now you're sharing it, or you uncovered it or rediscovered it, right? And so, like, the process of writing it, and I think, almost, as I've really studied Stoics, and one of the interesting things, as I've gone back and read more of the obscure Stoics, like, there's a metaphor in, in meditations where

• 2:21:30Speaker 01

  Marcus Aurelius talks about, like, being a wrestler, no, he talks about being a boxer, a pancrationist, like, the, the, the old form of MMA. And then I realized, oh, no, he's cribbing from an earlier Stoic. Like, he didn't invent this. That this exact paragraph basically appears somewhere else. And you go, oh, he was reminding himself of the, he was, the, the act of writing it down, paraphrasing it, putting it in his own language, was a way of kind of putting it in his own muscle memory. And so, writing, to me, is not this generative thing. It's more of this, like, repetitive meditation. Do you know what I mean? Like, writing the Daily Stoic is-

• 2:22:13Jocko Willink?

  It's reps.

• 2:22:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:22:14Jocko Willink?

  It's reps. It's reps on the squat rack.

• 2:22:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:18Jocko Willink?

  And you're gonna get a little bit stronger, and they're gonna get a little bit more embedded and ingrained in your head.

• 2:22:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. It doesn't make it easy to apply them, but it makes it easier to remember them.

• 2:22:30Jocko Willink?

  Uh, next up, um, The Daily Stoic. Three hundred and sixty-six meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living. Uh, little section of this.

• 2:22:48Jocko Willink?

  Some of us are stressed, others are overworked. Perhaps you're struggling with new responsibilities of parenthood, or the chaos of a new venture, or are you already successful in grappling with the duties of power or influence, wrestling with addiction, deeply in love, or moving from one flawed relationship to another? Are you approaching your golden years, or enjoying the spoils of youth? Busy and active, or bored out of your mind? Whatever it is, whatever you're going through, there is wisdom from the Stoics that can help. In fact, in many cases, they have addressed it explicitly in terms that feel shockingly modern. That's what we're going to focus on in this book.

• 2:23:30Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, organized along the lines of the three disciplines, perception, action, and will, and then further divided into important themes within those disciplines. You'll find that each month will stress a particular trait, and each day will offer a new way to think or act. The areas of great interest to the Stoics all make an appearance here. Virtue, morality, emotion, self-awareness, fortitude, right action, problem-solving, acceptance, mental clarity, pragmatism, unbiased thought, and duty. The aim of this hands-on approach to philosophy is to help you live a better life. It is our hope that there is not a word in this book that you can't, that can't or shouldn't, to paraphrase Seneca, be turned into works.

• 2:24:17Jocko Willink?

  So this one, uh, perception, action, and will. Talk me through those things.

• 2:24:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's also the structure of the obstacles away, which is basically like, you control how you look about, uh, how you, you control how you look at a problem, right? What you think and feel about the problem. Then you control the action that you take on the problem, and then you control the sort of willpower, determination, endurance that you bring to bear on the problem. Marcus realist in meditations, he sort of sums them up, he goes, "Objective judgment now at this very moment, unselfish action now at this very moment." And he says, "Willing acceptance now at this very moment." That is all that you need. And that is sort of the encapsulation of Stoicism, the idea that like, What is it? I'm not gonna be rattled by it. I'm not gonna exaggerate. I'm gonna see it for what it is. I'm gonna do what I gotta do.

• 2:25:03Speaker 01

  And then I'm gonna, I'm gonna persist through it, right? I'm gonna like, I'm gonna endure it and survive it. That, that is the sort of, that is how you make the obstacles, the way that is how you apply stoicism in big situations and small ones.

• 2:25:18Jocko Willink?

  I just did some live events and it's interesting how much of this, one of the things I was talking about is the, the,

• 2:25:28Jocko Willink?

  the amount of control of your choice of how you're gonna view things, right? What your perception of these things is gonna be, when something bad happens, when something good happens. How are you gonna actually perceive it? And then what actions are you gonna take about it? It's right, right along the lines of this, which is, which is, which is pretty strange. And then this book right here, so as you're writing this, it's kind of everything that we just talked about, right? This is like, oh, every day you're gonna remind yourself, you have a journal that goes along with, which I don't have a copy of it, but there's a journal that goes along with where you can say, oh, here's what I did today. You've set it up in a way that it's evergreen, there's no days, so you, it doesn't have to be Monday, January 1st.

• 2:26:09Jocko Willink?

  It can be Thursday, January 1st, and you're still good to go. And you can just keep rolling through this book forever.

• 2:26:15Speaker 01

  That's been the crazy part. I mean, people are eight years into it. And so I'll sign people's copies and it's like, they'll be like, oh, it's my favorite book. And it's like, I can tell it's not. And then you meet someone, you're like, oh, you put some fucking miles on this thing. And that's like the coolest, that's the coolest part.

• 2:26:29Jocko Willink?

  When they got four different or five different colored highlighters that have been used and different tags on them, different colored tapes to hang out.

• 2:26:36Speaker 01

  Cause that's what my copy of Meditations look like, looks like, you know, it's all taped back together and yeah, almost every page, almost every line is marked. Because at some point that line spoke to me, not the first time, not the 30th time, but the 100th time it did, you know? And the Stoics talk about this, they, they say that we never step in the same river twice. And what's cool about rereading books is that You're different. It's the same, but you're different. And so that's what it's supposed to be. And then I think the other tricky thing is like, when you, when you hear about a tradition or a way of thinking, like, where do you start? And I think when they suggested the day of Stoke, which is not, it wasn't like my idea at all. Actually, my agent who did the translation, Steve, is the one that suggested it. It's like, oh, yeah, start with all of them.

• 2:27:21Speaker 01

  It's like the greatest, it's the greatest hits album, you know? It's, these are the best ideas from the Stoics. It's like all my favorite quotes, and then I just riff on them. But I, I, I've found that that, that can be hard. Like, people go Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, which Stoic should I start with? And it's like, I need to know so much more about you before I can, you know, before I can tell you that. And this is like, kind of a survey course of the Stoics.

• 2:27:48Jocko Willink?

  And a daily reminder of what you're doing. And that stepping in the same river, is it? Cause there's a, the continuation of that quote, isn't it like, cause they're, it's not the same river and it's not the same man?

• 2:27:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:27:59Jocko Willink?

  Right? That's the continuation of it?

• 2:28:00Speaker 01

  It's from Herakles, this Greek poet.

• 2:28:05Jocko Willink?

  I've found that, like, I'll, I'll talk to a company and I'll talk about, let's say, the four laws of combat leadership. And two years later, I'll go back and talk to the same company. And some guy will come up like, wow, I really like the new, like, the, the new spin that you've put on these things. And I'm like, hey, man, I've been saying the same thing for the past 15 years.

• 2:28:26Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:28:27Jocko Willink?

  I won't say that, but I'll say, hey, you're seeing it differently now. You're, remember last time I was here, you had a team of four? And now you've got a team of 42?

• 2:28:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:35Jocko Willink?

  And you were not publicly traded company, and now you're publicly traded. So you got, it's totally different, it's a different river, different man.

• 2:28:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's another line, like, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. And it's like, it was all in the book, but it just, it, it wasn't unlocked for you. You didn't understand all that went into it. And so you, or you understood it on a surface level, and now you understand it to mean something totally different. And I, that's, that's to me what, like, great, timeless, amazing work is. There's even movies, you watch movies or you read books and you're like, First time they were the hero, now they're the villain, now they're the hero again, you know? The Civil War is like that for me. The more you study the Civil War, you go, you start, everyone has an arc, you know, and that's what moral complexity and reality is all about.

• 2:29:27Jocko Willink?

  Give me an example from the Civil War.

• 2:29:28Speaker 01

  Well, Grant is fascinating, uh, cause he's flawed, brilliant, flawed, brilliant. Should he become, should he have been president? You know, was he a good president, bad president? Is it impossible to tell because of the lost cause mythology? You know, is, is Robert E. Lee this sort of tragic figure or is he a monstrous villain? Right? Where my, my, my thing on the Civil War is like, you know, you learn as a kid, you're like, it was all about slavery. Right? Then you study the Civil War and you're like, it was way more complicated than just being about slavery. Then you really study the Civil War and you're like, it was a hundred percent about slavery. Like, and you know what I mean? It becomes, I think when you study things, you study people, it's very simple.

• 2:30:11Speaker 01

  And it gets complicated and then wisdom is the ability for that complication to then become a kind of simplicity again. You know what I mean? Um, and so, I mean, that's why every time I pick up a book about the Civil War, I'm like, I do not need to read another book about the Civil War. I have so many things I don't know about. I should read about something new. And then I just get something totally new out of it. And I'm like, okay, fine.

• 2:30:36Jocko Willink?

  Have you been to battlefields?

• 2:30:38Speaker 01

  Billion of them.

• 2:30:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:40Speaker 01

  What's your favorite?

• 2:30:41Jocko Willink?

  Uh, Gettysburg. And you know, and I haven't been to a billion of them, but I've been to Gettysburg, I think seven times now. So we do, we do like a battlefield tour at Gettysburg and it's, it's just awesome. It's just awesome.

• 2:30:54Speaker 01

  See, I'm a Vicksburg guy.

• 2:30:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:56Speaker 01

  I think Vicksburg is more important.

• 2:30:57Jocko Willink?

  We've talked about going to Vicksburg, Vicksburg as well. And yeah, I mean, you could certainly argue that it's more important for sure.

• 2:31:04Speaker 01

  I mean, the South should have, should have surrendered the day after Vicksburg. It was done.

• 2:31:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:10Speaker 01

  It's done.

• 2:31:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's such a, it's such a crazy war. And one of the things that's interesting about it is, um, and I forget, there's some, there's some sort of statistic you can get, but the, the soldiers were really, really literate and they were really, really good writers.

• 2:31:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:31:27Jocko Willink?

  And you, you read what they're writing about the Civil War and they're like private soldiers on the front line. And they're super articulate. It's just awesome to read. And you have all these accounts of all these people that wrote all these letter homes or, or kept, kept these journals and you can get a really close ground truth to what they were thinking, what they were feeling.

• 2:31:45Speaker 01

  Oh, it's so fascinating. And then, yeah, you read like Grant's memoirs and you're like, this is like one of the greatest books ever written. And it's just this, like, how did he write this? I, I like Sherman the best, but.

• 2:31:57Jocko Willink?

  It's wild to the Gettysburg battlefield that just the, just the whole, when I explain to people that haven't been there before and I was like, hey, here's how they set it up. On the one side of the battlefield, you've got General Lee on a horse, standing, looking across the battlefield from where his troops were arraigned. And on the other side of the battlefield, you've got General Meade on a horse and he's looking where his, from where his troops were arraigned. Like you can't, it's almost too good. It's like the perfect, it's the perfect memorial battlefield. They're showing you how this thing went down.

• 2:32:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. You want, you wonder why I love Vicksburg? Cause Vicksburg is the perfect obstacle is the way story. So they sent, Lincoln sends Grant, cause Grant's like the only guy in the West with momentum. And they send Grant, but he also sends, uh, was it McLernan? He's, he sends his replacement at the same time, his political replacement, cause Grant's gonna fail, you'll take over. So Grant goes, Vicksburg now is like this nothing city, but it's the, it's the only stronghold left on the river. It's the most important city in America, cause it controls the navigation and the most important river in the country that splits it in half. So it's this citadel on the bluffs there of the Mississippi. So Grant's like, well, attack. Doesn't work. He's like, okay, we'll go above it. Doesn't work. He's like, well, we'll dig a canal. We'll just move the river. Doesn't work. He's trying everything, right?

• 2:33:19Speaker 01

  And then he finally has this idea. First up, my other favorite thing is Sherman gets there. Sherman technically outranks Grant. And he just says, no, no, you're in charge, like surrenders superiority in this moment. So I'll do whatever you want. And Sherman gets like the worst job. He's like running a faint. He gets like the least sexy job in the whole thing. But anyways, Grant and Porter and Farragut, they run the gunboats and they skip Vicksburg altogether, right? This a thing that once you do, you cannot undo. So they run the gunboats, they make it. And they cross like 300 miles south, 100 miles south, something like that, at Hard Times, Louisiana, like the perfectly named city.

• 2:34:02Speaker 01

  He crosses and then Grant goes, now we're talking. He's like boots on the ground on the right side of the enemy, you know? And then you so you think, okay, he's obviously he's crossed the river. And now he's going to head up to Vicksburg. Instead, he says, forget about Vicksburg and he heads to Jackson. And he basically takes Jackson, burns it to the ground, which is what was supplying the citadel in Vicksburg. And then, you know, months later, now he's in this, he's in this thing for like a year. Now he heads back towards Vicksburg and now suddenly all the advantages of being a fortress on a bluff on the Mississippi River are a disadvantage. Now they are trapped in said, said city, right? And he lays siege. He doesn't give in. You know, it takes like two months. They finally surrender.

• 2:34:47Speaker 01

  They surrender on the Fourth of July, thinking that he'll be merciful, which of course he is not. And then Vicksburg does not celebrate the Fourth of July till 1945 in protest of this. But basically all the lessons that Grant and Sherman. Use or learn there or how they win the war. Sherman, cutting the supply lines, being on the right side of the river, taking the war to the enemy. Sherman's march is learned there at hard times. And for Grant, he was like, I've got more men. I've got more time. I've got more money. He's like, if I just don't quit, we win. And so when Grant goes east and takes over the army of the Potomac, it is from Vicksburg. So not only is, does he take all the advantages of the enemy and flip them on his head,

• 2:35:32Speaker 01

  but also in trying all these different things, he accident, because it wasn't easy, because it didn't go his way the first time, he learns everything that he then uses to win this civil war. The Battle of the Wilderness, the Siege of Richmond and Petersburg, all that is from Vicksburg.

• 2:35:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, which by the way, you can never figure out if you're not humble.

• 2:35:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:35:54Jocko Willink?

  Because you just stick with the same plan. Interestingly, we, my last deployment to Iraq, we were in the city of Ramadi and we were working very closely with the, with the army, with the 111 A.D. And they had a great Colonel who became a general. And we were doing a big operation and he, so Vicksburg was the first joint, what we call in the military, a joint operation between the army and the Navy.

• 2:36:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, because the Navy's in the rivers. People don't see that now.

• 2:36:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so, so we did this big operation and took down a big chunk of the city and we called, he named the operation Vicksburg because it was, you know, Army Navy working together, even though there's only 40 SEALs out there that were working from the Navy side, but you know, we were, we were doing our best to have an impact and he was appreciative of it, so he named it Vicksburg.

• 2:36:41Speaker 01

  I love that because it is this remarkable story of collaboration and egolessness and that Porter and Farragut and Grant and Sherman all worked together. And my favorite moment, I'm actually just writing about this now, as I'm doing this series on the Four Virtues and friend, my justice, which isn't the legal justice, it's like, how do you comport yourself as a person? Well, when Grant comes up with this plan to run the gunboats and do all this stuff, Sherman's like, it is a terrible idea. This will not work. Do not do it. Grant's like, I take this, I hear you, but here's why I think I'm right. And Sherman's like, I think you're wrong. And he goes back and he's like, I think you're so wrong. I'm going to memorialize it in a letter. He's like, I have to write, he was so worked up about what a terrible mistake they think he thinks he's making.

• 2:37:25Speaker 01

  He's like, I want to put it in writing. So he puts it in writing, sends it to Grant. Of course, it works out. Sherman, once Sherman's overruled, he plays along, does everything he's supposed to without a complaint. And then after it's a success, you know, Grant's like giving Sherman all this credit, the reporters are there. And Sherman walks up and he's like, it needs to be on the record that I opposed this, right? And like, he's like, I thought it was a bad idea. All the credit goes to this guy. And then when Grant's writing his memoirs, Sherman goes, sends him another letter and he says, I'm sure you have forgotten about this and I know that you deleted the, like, I know you ripped up the letter. So I'm enclosing another copy. So the record can, you know, he doesn't even want, in this moment, he doesn't want credit.

• 2:38:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:10Speaker 01

  Undeservedly. And he wants the record to show like, hey, I didn't do it right. And you can, you can see how easily a leader can only focus on how the results went, that it worked out. And not the fact that they had like, he want, I think he not only wanted to be honest, but I think he was also going, hey, this was an instance where I got it super wrong. And I want to make sure that that's what stays with me and what other future people learn is that, uh, you know, I didn't get it right. I, I'm not a genius. I don't have the Midas. I thought it was wrong. I thought it was wrong. And then I was proven wrong. I just love that story so much.

• 2:38:48Jocko Willink?

  No, that's a great point. I talk about that with leaders all the time. Anytime I'm wrong, I'm super stoked because it gives the opportunity to admit to everyone that I'm wrong and be humble and say, look, you're, you had a better idea than me. Let's use your idea. I love being wrong. It's awesome. I also always say that I rarely have to admit that I'm wrong. And the reason I rarely have to admit that I'm wrong is because I don't run around saying I'm right about something.

• 2:39:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:39:10Jocko Willink?

  I don't sit there and say, well, I think we should use this marketing plan because I think I'm right. No, I say, well, I'm not really sure that could work. How about this idea? So if you don't paint yourself into a corner by screaming to everyone that you're right, or creating memorandums where you say, I want to go on record by saying that this is wrong, which is a weird tact to take. I guess back in the day, you might've been trying to. Maybe trying to document that fact, just so if it does go wrong, you can say, hey dude, I pointed it out to you. That's a really weird thing at Gettysburg too, when you had Long Street. And those are documented too, where he's saying, listen, I've, I've commanded squads and platoons and companies and battalions and brigades. And in my estimation, no army ever assembled could

• 2:39:54Jocko Willink?

  take this position. And Lee's like, cool, we're doing it anyways. And that's, he probably should have documented that a little bit better than he did.

• 2:40:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it's, it's so fascinating. I, we did, we just did this with Daily Stoic recently, where like, they, they had, they put this video together, they had some, one work on it. And I was like, it's, it's terrible. It's not gonna work. You know, I was like, here's all the reasons I don't like it. And they were like, no, trust me on this. And they put it out, you know, did like a million views like the first day. And it's a good reminder too, in Hollywood, there's this expression, nobody knows anything about what's gonna work. It's all guess. And the second you start to be right a couple of times in a row.

• 2:40:32Jocko Willink?

  Watch out.

• 2:40:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, then you're fucked, right? Like with Trust Me, I'm Lying, the publisher almost canceled the book over the cover. I knew it was the right cover.

• 2:40:41Jocko Willink?

  Is it the current cover right here?

• 2:40:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I think it's amazing. But they didn't like it.

• 2:40:45Jocko Willink?

  One thing is interesting, my publisher told me, he said, look, you know, we're talking about how, this is when Extreme Ownership, Extreme Ownership is coming out, we don't know anything about, like, we weren't you going into this. Leif and I were just knuckleheads that were, wrote a book. And we're like, well, how do you think it's gonna do? And, and our publisher, Mark, was like, listen, nobody knows. Nobody knows. Nobody knows how good a bark book is gonna do. He had some example of some book that Oprah Winfrey was on her show, at Oprah Winfrey's peak of her show, saying, this is an incredible book, buy this book. And like, they sold 3,000 copies and that was that, done. So no, only the public knows.

• 2:41:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:41:23Jocko Willink?

  That's why the viral thing, the creating viral thing, which is interesting, because you talk about creating viral things, and you're able to pull it off sometimes. But even the great Ryan Holiday, two weeks ago was saying, hey, this video is stupid, don't put it out. And it's a freaking viral video with a million views.

• 2:41:36Speaker 01

  Well, no, and so they didn't like the cover. And I, I, I stuck to my guns and it worked out. And then on a later book. I was very convinced that the cover should be a certain way and the subtitle should be a certain way and it didn't work. It was, it didn't like fail, but it just didn't, it didn't work. And in the paperback, we fixed it all. And so it's, it's like, I could, I guess, go to my grave convinced I was right and blame some other factor. But at the end of the day, you gotta go, no, you're not going to be right 100%. Like statistically, you're going to be wrong, like a lot. And so I almost, one of the reasons I look forward to when it's objectively and irrefutable, irrefutable that I was wrong, I go, okay, this is, this is like eliminating one of, this is, if it was never going this way,

• 2:42:18Speaker 01

  then I am clearly in the throes of ego. Cause it, it's definitely happening. I'm just not seeing it. So you want to seize on the times where you're like, yeah, I think I got this wrong. I made the bad call. Clearly it's not true. Cause you don't get that clarity that often.

• 2:42:31Jocko Willink?

  No, no, you don't. So then we get into, speaking of selling, the perennial seller, the art of making and marketing work that lasts. So this was like a step back.

• 2:42:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit.

• 2:42:45Jocko Willink?

  What brought this about?

• 2:42:47Speaker 01

  Uh, I just got lots of people would ask me for advice on books because I'd worked on so many. And then the publisher was like, hey, do you want to do this book marketing book? And I was, I was kicking it around. And then I was like, I don't actually care about marketing books. I care about making stuff that lasts. Like, it's funny, right? You're measured in the first week of your sales when you put something out. How many, how do you sell? So if you sell like 10,000 copies, let's say you make the bestseller list. But if you sell a thousand copies a week for a year, you sold a lot more copies, but you will not appear on any bestseller list. And so people always measure themselves on the wrong, the wrong things, right? And it's funny, the publishing industry, all of the money and all of the success is on things that are old, right? What they call

• 2:43:32Speaker 01

  perennial titles or the backlist. And yet all the energy and all the focus and all the media coverage is on what's coming out like this Tuesday. And so I'm interested in the stuff that lasts. And how do you, how do you make it? How do you market it? What do you learn from the stuff that has?

• 2:43:50Jocko Willink?

  And then what, so you write this book. Well, how does it do? Like this, like this is a niche market, right? There's not too many people that are like, yo, I'm writing a book. I want to see how I do this.

• 2:43:58Speaker 01

  I mean, it's, it's more about how you make anything that lasts. It's like sort of lessons from sort of timeless work. If I was doing it again, I'd probably do it differently. I think I might do it differently at some point. Like the ideas in it are really good and it sold, I mean, it sold well enough. Any author would be very excited to have that number of sales.

• 2:44:16Jocko Willink?

  Had you made the New York Times bestseller list yet at this point?

• 2:44:20Speaker 01

  You know what's funny? No, no, I'd sold, I'd sold well into the millions of copies before I hit the New York Times list for the first time, which was a very surreal, strange experience. The obstacle is the way it came out. It hit the, the Wall Street Journalists and then has never hit the New York Times list. And I didn't hit the New York Times list for the first time until I debuted at number one with my like ninth book. So these things don't mean anything, but that is what, you know, people care about. You know, how much money companies raised, right? They care about like who's selling it, but they don't care like, is this still going to be around?

• 2:44:56Jocko Willink?

  Is it profitable?

• 2:44:57Speaker 01

  Right. Is it profitable and is it still going to be around 10 years from now? You know, two years from now, 18 months from now, right? Like so everyone chases what's popular now, but they don't think about, is this likely to? You know, when I wrote Growth Hacker Marketing, I knew this is only going to have a short, you know, relatively short life. But I think so many people write things and they, they think it's going to last. And then it's just, what are you talking about? This has never had a shot. You know, this never had a shot. And so I think when you, when you, if you're going to write a book, if you're making a YouTube video that goes up right now, can, it can be of the moment. But if you're going to take the time to do something like start a company or book or whatever, it's gotta, it's gotta have the potential to have legs.

• 2:45:39Jocko Willink?

  And writing a book, again, this is something we were talking about before we hit record. Writing a book is hard to do.

• 2:45:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:45:46Jocko Willink?

  If you're writing it yourself, if you're going to pay someone to write it, cool, whatever. You know, you're weak, but if, if you're gonna, if you're gonna actually write the book yourself, it's going to be, it's hard to do. It takes time. It's editing a book is hard to do. Like the whole thing is just hard to do. It takes a whole bunch of time. And, and what's really crazy is like writing a book. You can, you can write a, you can write a fantastic, incredible book and it'll sell, you know, 1400 copies and that's that, it's done. And you can write like another book that happens to get in some people's heads and all of a sudden it can sell like crazy. You can write some of your books that have like not done very well according to the market

• 2:46:29Jocko Willink?

  out of the gate and yet now they're selling hundreds of thousands of copies over time. So it's a wild thing to get into. It's not a, uh, it's not a very stable thing to get into.

• 2:46:40Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:46:41Jocko Willink?

  Like if you, if you're out there thinking, well, I'm going to be co-author and sell a bunch of books, that's a rough, that's a rough game to get into.

• 2:46:47Speaker 01

  Well, one of the funny things is since the books have worked, you know, people go, oh, Ryan, Ryan's just writing about stoicism to make money. And I was like, I couldn't think of a worse thing to do to make money. Like first off, cause I remember the conversations with my publisher when I was like, I want to write about stoicism. And they were like, what's the least amount of money we can offer this person? And it was a not large amount of money. And they told me later that they were just hoping I would like get it out of my system. But then when something works, obviously it's, it seems like obviously that was your plan all along, but the reality is books are a terrible way to make money.

• 2:47:23Jocko Willink?

  Yes, they are.

• 2:47:23Speaker 01

  Right? And, and they take an incredible amount of time and energy and they, they torture you. And so like when I, when I, when I talk to people and they go, I think I'm writing, thinking about writing a book, I go, good, don't. Right? Like if you cannot do it, don't do it. Right? Like only write a book if you can't not do it.

• 2:47:44Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:47:44Speaker 01

  Right?

• 2:47:44Jocko Willink?

  Good advice.

• 2:47:45Speaker 01

  Like it has to be something that you would be happy with if it sold seven copies. Right?

• 2:47:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I, well, I had the same thing happen when Extreme Ownership came out, I immediately was going to write a kid's book. And I wish I could have recorded the conversation with my, with my editor. And this guy's a friend of mine, he's a great dude, but you know, he's like, hey, like, like he's trying 15 different ways to talk me out of doing this. You know, it's just like crazy that, that. You're just gonna get put in this pigeonhole and then that's that. And we don't want to hear anything else from you. The other thing that this reminds me of, uh, this is more advice from Tim Ferriss. When you're done writing a book, you're 50% there.

• 2:48:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:48:26Jocko Willink?

  Like when you're done with the labor of writing a book, you you now have 50% more to do. That's just as hard as the first 50% that you just did when you thought you were done.

• 2:48:38Speaker 01

  I've described it to people. It's you finish running a marathon and then, you know, you come through the gate and you're like, and you're staggering across the finish line. You you had this last burst of adrenaline that got you through it. I'm done. And they grab you and they pull you through the chute. And you think they're taking you to like the tent where you can relax. They put that metal blanket on you or whatever, or the metal stand. And they're actually just taking you to the starting line of the second marathon that you have to start right now. And it's it's a less fulfilling marathon. It's a less in your control. And, uh, it's also more embarrassing and awkward and all the things that you you didn't want to do to begin with. But if you don't do it, no one else is going to do it for you.

• 2:49:20Speaker 01

  And what does it say about like when people are like, oh, I don't, I don't do that marketing sales stuff. I'm just like a writer or creative. I'm an inventor, you know, whatever. I'm a purist. It's like, well, what you're saying is that your shit sucks and that you don't believe in it enough to want to go on podcasts and talk about it. Or that you don't know it well enough to confidently sell it or market it. And so, yeah, it it has to be a huge part of the equation. Otherwise, why did you do it? Like, why did you, I'm not why did you do it? Because like getting your thoughts down on paper, there's something valuable in that. But why did you slave over every sentence and the packaging? And like you did all that because it's for people. And now, now that the fear of them potentially not liking it

• 2:50:06Speaker 01

  and the potential audience being crickets, now you're trying to back out of it going, well, that that was never important to me. I don't care. And so it's this tension of like, you have to be pure and do it for only the right reasons. And then, once you decide to put it out, you have to become marketer and a hustler. And you have to work just as creatively and committedly to selling it to people. And it's a long, fucking hard slog. The obstacle is away, sold millions of copies. But at the first week, it sold. Thirty one hundred copies, maybe, you know? And that was, that was, that seemed like a lot, but in retrospect is, you know, not even a fraction of a percent.

• 2:50:43Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:50:44Speaker 01

  And so, everything that succeeds comes to dwarf what it did at the beginning, hopefully. And that's because you didn't quit on it. And you kept pounding the pavement, doing the work.

• 2:50:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So, speaking of why did you do it? Next, you roll into Conspiracy. Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue.

• 2:51:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:51:08Jocko Willink?

  So, this is, this is out of left field book.

• 2:51:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, wrong subtitle. Then I forget what the new subtitle is.

• 2:51:12Jocko Willink?

  Oh, is there?

• 2:51:13Speaker 01

  No, no, I'm saying like, that was the subtitle. I was like, this is the subtitle. And we fought, I was like, fought so much about it. And then now it's, it's like sex, power, and a billionaire's

• 2:51:26Speaker 01

  vendetta to crush a media empire, something that's like, actually sounds compelling to read in retrospect. Like, I totally, and the cover-

• 2:51:33Jocko Willink?

  That's funny too, because I bought into that. Like, I was like, dude, this, it's like, you know, pickles, no, like, get a sandwich here. Pickles, barbecue sauce, and, you know, fried fish. And you're like, whoa, what is this? I want to try it. So, when I see Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, and Gawker, I'm like, whoa, what's going on here? And I kind of vaguely remembered the whole story thing, but-

• 2:51:53Speaker 01

  Well, that's what I thought. And, and you're probably like a nerd like me, so you're like, intrigue? You know, you like, think it's gonna be a spy, but that's not what the market thought at all. It's my least selling book, but the one I am most proud of, because it was the hardest to do. And it was the most outside my comfort zone. But basically, I happened to know Peter Thiel a little bit, and I knew Nick Denton, who was the creator of this company called Gawker. And these two, basically-

• 2:52:16Jocko Willink?

  Wait, you knew them both?

• 2:52:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd met them both before. I knew Nick from my American Apparel days, and I'd been to a party at Peter's house many years. So, I knew them both. Then these two guys get locked in this ten-year campaign to destroy each other. And-

• 2:52:32Speaker 01

  And somehow, like, basically, the book starts with, um, I, at one, one afternoon, I had, like, lunch at one of their house, houses, and like, dinner at the, like, I was in both houses on the same day, and

• 2:52:45Jocko Willink?

  Did they know that?

• 2:52:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they were like, what's, you know, and so I was like, I gotta tell, because it's an insane story. For people who don't know, basically, in 2007, this tech website called Gawker outs Peter Thiel as gay, which he was, but he was private about it. And then he, uh, decides to destroy them for this. But what they did wasn't illegal. So he spends 10 years plotting in secret, waiting for them to fuck up. And then in 2011 or 12, they run a stolen sex tape of

• 2:53:20Jocko Willink?

  Hulk Hogan.

• 2:53:21Speaker 01

  Hulk Hogan having sex with his best friend's wife. Uh, Bubba the Love Sponge was a Florida DJ, and that's the name of the other dude. It's just like weirder and weirder. And so they, they run this stolen sex tape, and Peter Thiel hires a legal team to secretly, Hulk Hogan never knows that Peter's a part of it, to secretly fund a hundred million dollar lawsuit, which they ultimately win, and bankrupt Gawker. And then, uh, Peter ends up bidding in the auction, like, almost gets the assets of the company in the end of it. So it's this

• 2:53:52Jocko Willink?

  Wait, he almost gets the assets, or he gets them?

• 2:53:54Speaker 01

  He, he destroys the company, somebody else ends up buying it. Like, the judge wouldn't sell it to him. But it's almost a, do you know a spoleo optima? So the, in, in, in Roman combat, the ultimate victory for a general to get, it's only happened like, three times, is, uh, you defeat the other general on the field of battle, hand to hand, and then you strip their armor from them. And so he's as close to that as you could possibly get in, like, the business world. Uh, and it's, so it's this insane story, which I use as a way of just talking about strategy.

• 2:54:27Jocko Willink?

  Was your book a postmortem, or were you in it as it was happening?

• 2:54:31Speaker 01

  This is all postmortem, but I, I had, like, you know, to read 20,000 pages of legal documents, and I interviewed all the people, including Hulk Hogan, who showed up, showed up wearing a T-shirt. A Hulk Hogan T-shirt, which, you know, makes sense.

• 2:54:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:54:46Speaker 01

  It was, so it was an insane story, which I just really wanted to tell. And I think I did, I think I did a really good job. I think it's really interesting. I know there's a way I could have done it differently and would have sold more copies, but that wasn't what the story that I wanted to tell.

• 2:54:59Jocko Willink?

  How could you have sold more copies?

• 2:55:00Speaker 01

  I could have made Peter Thiel the villain. And instead I saw him as like the sort of fascinating anti-hero of the story, if that makes sense.

• 2:55:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:55:09Speaker 01

  Cause like, even if you don't agree with what he did, I was fascinated with how he did it.

• 2:55:13Jocko Willink?

  It's kinda cool, right?

• 2:55:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I'm like, there's something bad, even if it's bad, it's still badass. And so I wanted to tell that story, which ended up being really, I was fascinated by it.

• 2:55:24Jocko Willink?

  Hulk Hogan, I met him at the UFC one time, he's huge.

• 2:55:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, and his-

• 2:55:29Jocko Willink?

  He's a massive dude.

• 2:55:30Speaker 01

  His life is very sad. His life was very sad. And this moment-

• 2:55:34Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm. What's up with him right now? Give us an update.

• 2:55:37Speaker 01

  No, no, I don't know what's up with him now. But in the moment that this happens, you know, his life is, I mean, his life has fallen apart. His wife has left him, his, one of his kids is about to go to jail.

• 2:55:47Jocko Willink?

  What's his career going to jail for?

• 2:55:48Speaker 01

  I killed a guy in a car accident. Um, just like all the things that fame and success can do to a person. And it happens to him. And then this most private moment is leaked on the internet. And then, yeah, he wins this, when, ends up winning, five years later wins this insane lawsuit that's been secretly funded. And I'm also just, like, you know, they go, revenge is a dish best served cold. But nobody can do it. And nobody can wait, you know?

• 2:56:16Jocko Willink?

  Except for Peter Thiel.

• 2:56:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. The, uh, the patience and the Machiavellian-ness of it is just, I just nerded out about it.

• 2:56:26Jocko Willink?

  And he knew that you were writing the book and it was coming out?

• 2:56:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, he, he, he talked to me. So he let me, like, he gave me all the, so he even, he hired this kid. And this kid pretended to be fun, this kid pretended to have a wealthy benefactor who was funding lawsuits, but that was his intermediary between Hogan's legal team and Thiel. So nobody knew Thiel. Thiel's involvement was revealed like three weeks after the verdict. So he pulled off complete and total secrecy.

• 2:57:02Jocko Willink?

  That's freaking legit. What did you, what did you uncover in the story that like surprised even you?

• 2:57:10Speaker 01

  Um, what was, what was some of the, well, I mean, just, I was the first one to break that this dude was there, that there was this, this.

• 2:57:16Jocko Willink?

  Character intermediary?

• 2:57:18Speaker 01

  The interme, the Deep Throat, if you will, you know, like the, the guy with the secret identity. That was, that was pretty nuts.

• 2:57:26Speaker 01

  There's like this whole FBI sting that happened that was pretty crazy. Here's the funny, so why does this all happen? Why is, so basically Bubba likes to watch his wife get railed by other dudes. That's what he gets off. So he's secretly filming it, right? He secretly films Hulk Hogan having sex with his wife, which is weird on, on to itself.

• 2:57:48Jocko Willink?

  You can say that.

• 2:57:49Speaker 01

  But, but the reason it gets out is that a rival DJ in Florida who wants Bubba's spot on the radio, breaks into Bubba's office and rummages through his desk and finds the tape and he's the one that leaks the tape. So this whole thing, this whole clash between these insane personalities happens because one weird Florida DJ wants to humiliate another Florida DJ and it's just the weirdest, craziest story that I've ever.

• 2:58:19Jocko Willink?

  Make this up.

• 2:58:19Speaker 01

  You couldn't. No, you couldn't. Like, it's unreal.

• 2:58:22Jocko Willink?

  The Coen brothers couldn't come up with this. Maybe they could, but I don't know.

• 2:58:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it's just like, it was, the whole thing was, you know, absurd. It's the whole thing from start to finish is completely absurd.

• 2:58:33Jocko Willink?

  So did you get, uh, did your publisher buy into this thing?

• 2:58:37Speaker 01

  A little bit. I mean, they gave me like much less than I normally would get.

• 2:58:40Jocko Willink?

  They're like, okay, fine. Go ahead and do it.

• 2:58:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then it's been in like movie turnaround for like ever since I wrote it, but.

• 2:58:48Jocko Willink?

  Documentary style, reenactment style?

• 2:58:51Speaker 01

  Like, uh, like, um, the director, The Hunger Games optioned it. And then the guy that wrote, uh, uh, The Big Short, he wrote, he wrote a script. So it's like, it's been, you know, they've attached like multiple crazy actors to each of the roles and then it never happens.

• 2:59:07Jocko Willink?

  What do you think's holding it back?

• 2:59:09Speaker 01

  I don't know. I don't get how, I don't get how it works at all. It's exa, I don't know. There's a lot of meetings, a lot of phone calls and it never.

• 2:59:18Jocko Willink?

  It sounds freaking wild.

• 2:59:19Speaker 01

  It was, it was insane.

• 2:59:21Jocko Willink?

  Uh, then you kind of get back to your, you back to your roots on the next one, right? Um, stillness is the key.

• 2:59:30Jocko Willink?

  You've commented on me reading this thing right now, so I'm gonna go hot on this one.

• 2:59:34Speaker 01

  Sweet.

• 2:59:34Jocko Willink?

  "In our own lives, we face a seemingly equal number of problems and are pulled in countless directions by competing priorities and beliefs.

• 2:59:44Jocko Willink?

  In the way of everything we hope to accomplish, personally and professionally, sit obstacles and enemies." Martin Luther King Jr. observed that there was a violent civil war raging within each and every person, between our good and bad impulses, between our ambitions and our principles, between what can be and how hard it is to actually get there. In those battles, in that war, stillness is the river and the railroad junction through which so much depends. It is the key to thinking clearly, to seeing the whole chessboard, to making tough decisions,

• 3:00:25Jocko Willink?

  to managing our emotions, to identifying the right goals, to handling high-pressure situations, to maintaining relationships, to building good habits, to being productive, to physical excellence, to feeling fulfilled, to capturing moments of laughter and joy. Stillness is the key to just about everything, to being a better parent, a better artist, a better investor, a better athlete, a better scientist, a better human being, to unlocking all that we are capable of in this life."

• 3:01:02Speaker 01

  That's about as hard as I can go on that one. No, it's funny, I forgot, but I actually tell the story of Vicksburg. In the introduction of that book, Lincoln calls all the generals in. Everyone from the War Department has this big map of the United States. You know, there's a million plans for how to win the Civil War, the Anaconda Plan, we did this, this, all these different... And he's... He points at Vicksburg and goes, "Vicksburg is the key." He knew like in the earliest days of the Civil War, that was the city that mattered. And the ability to sort of tune everything out and lock in on what is the strategic objective that matters more than anything else is the main, you know, it's the main thing. Like, how do you quiet the noise, internal, external,

• 3:01:47Speaker 01

  avoid the distractions, avoid the short term, avoid the tactical stuff, and go to like the essence of what matters? That's like the rarest skill of all. And that's the one that leaders have to have and, you know, athletes have to have. Like, the game on the line, you're shooting free throws. Everyone's screaming at you. Can you do what you've done a thousand times, but now it actually counts? Not get in your own head about it? You know, that's, that's everything.

• 3:02:17Jocko Willink?

  What other word could you use besides stillness?

• 3:02:21Speaker 01

  What I like about stillness is it's one of those words that's like, you can't exactly define it, but you know exactly what it means. And that seems to be shared across all the traditions. Like, the Stoics had this word "apathia." The Epicureans had this word "ataraxia." But basically, it just means like a freedom from disturbance, right? Like, even if you are moving, you are still, right? And in Zen Buddhism, they talk about, you know, you have a cup of muddy water. You let it sit still, it becomes clear. So, the idea, you know, is there in almost all the spiritual and religious traditions of some idea of peace and tranquility and calmness. And if you can get there, you know,

• 3:03:05Speaker 01

  that's where, that's what unlocks whatever it is that you need to do, whether it's like being present with your kids or it's some high-stress, high-stakes scenario or your life is on the line. If you're everywhere, you're nowhere. How do you get in the moment that you're in to do what you need to do? That, to me, that's what stillness is.

• 3:03:24Jocko Willink?

  What are your protocols for finding that?

• 3:03:28Speaker 01

  I mean, on a day-to-day basis, which is weirdly both the easiest and the hardest way to be, to do it. To me, it's all about routine and structure. Like, what do you do? When do you get up? What do you do first? What do you do second? What do you not do? So, I'm a big, I'm like a big routine guy. Wake up at the same time. Don't do the phone, right? My thing is I don't do the phone for the first thirty minutes. One hour I'm awake. I try to take my kids outside. We usually go on a long walk. If I'm by myself, I'll work out by myself, but I do something physical, usually do journaling. I don't do breakfast and then I, you know, I take them to school or whatever I have to like my, get everyone situated for the day thing. And then I, then I write. And then, so by like ten

• 3:04:12Speaker 01

  or eleven, like everything else for the rest of the day is, is bonus for me. I don't have anything I'm worried about, any regrets. Like I've, if I crush that morning, I'm not only am I going to carry that stillness with me to whatever I have to do for the rest of the day, but it's also kind of irrelevant because I already won.

• 3:04:32Jocko Willink?

  That's cool. Um, I got a question. I got, I think I actually have the, I have an, an idea for your next book.

• 3:04:39Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah?

• 3:04:40Jocko Willink?

  It's the other path that Ryan Holiday took at, at American Apparel.

• 3:04:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:04:47Jocko Willink?

  Where like, whatever, you know, whatever was going on there, you just got caught up. It's, when we were explaining that morning routine, I'm like, this is amazing that you made it to this situation where you're waking up at the same time, you're journaling, you're hanging out with your kids, you're working out, you're carrying on with a nice, pleasant life in Texas. I'm like, thinking back to when you were nineteen years old, you're working at American Apparel, there's mayhem going on there. There's models and, and just drugs and mayhem and money and power. And you're right at the, right at the seat of the emperor and you're there to receive some of that. It's like, this is amazing that you made it to this spot where you didn't get caught up in all that.

• 3:05:30Speaker 01

  I, I write about this a little bit in the conclude, in the afterword of Courage is Calling. Cause yeah, I, I, in retrospect, I was clearly caught up in something. Cold is too strong of word, but you, you get in situations that have an energy and a, a rhythm that you can't get out of. And that's, that's what screws with your moral compass. Like you get it, you can get competing in a game and you can get so locked into the competition of it or the winning of it, that you don't think about whether it's the right game or not. And I think that was a good chunk of my twenties. And that, that scene for sure. I mean, there's moments where I remember I was, I remember. And I was asked to do something that I didn't want to do. And so I didn't do it. I said I wasn't going to do it. But I I should have spoken up more about it.

• 3:06:16Speaker 01

  And I was like, well, why didn't I? And I was like, well, I didn't want to get fired. And then it was like, well, first off, I did want to get fired. I wanted to be a writer. So I'm like trying to not lose a job that I do want to lose. But also, like, any job that you would get fired for doing what is obviously the right thing is not a job that you should want, right? And so, you know, I think it was, I look back at that time and I was, one, very young. Two, still figuring out who I was. But I was also just so overwhelmed and busy that I didn't, I couldn't get to the outside of it, like we're talking about. I couldn't get to the outside of it and go, this is insane. This is not healthy. This is also not what you want to do with your life. You gotta get out. But we always have our, we have our reasons.

• 3:06:58Speaker 01

  We have our reasons. And those reasons, what I have found is they don't age well. The reasons, the reason that you didn't do the brave or the right or the obvious thing, like it doesn't, it doesn't age well.

• 3:07:11Jocko Willink?

  Is it a good assessment to say that you were kind of like the it kid?

• 3:07:17Speaker 01

  I was the kid going places.

• 3:07:18Jocko Willink?

  You were 20 years old. Were you getting written about in magazines and stuff like this?

• 3:07:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I was also just doing stuff that like, no one in my family had ever done. I didn't even know you could do. You know, I mean, I'm, I was running marketing for a publicly traded company.

• 3:07:32Jocko Willink?

  Crazy.

• 3:07:33Speaker 01

  When I could.

• 3:07:34Jocko Willink?

  This is a job for like a 53 year old seasoned like person that been through the wringer. And you're freaking 20 years old.

• 3:07:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was insane. It was totally insane. And.

• 3:07:46Jocko Willink?

  Were you making a shit ton of money too?

• 3:07:48Speaker 01

  No, not really. That was sort of his thing is he would give you the keys to the kingdom, but not really pay you. I mean, I was definitely getting paid, but I wasn't, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't making.

• 3:07:57Jocko Willink?

  Did you buy a house in LA? Did you buy a house in LA?

• 3:08:00Speaker 01

  No, I bought my first house in Austin after I, after I left.

• 3:08:05Jocko Willink?

  Did you have a kick ass apartment or whatever?

• 3:08:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was pretty cool. I mean, it was a good life. It was crazy. And.

• 3:08:10Jocko Willink?

  And you were married at this time?

• 3:08:12Speaker 01

  I was with my, we got married after, but basically, yeah. And then, and I, you know, I sort of had this moment, I open ego is the enemy with it. But basically, like, at one point, my wife is like, fuck this, I'm out. And I realized like, I don't need written two book. I was like, I have my dream. Like, all I wanted to do is be a writer. And I'm destroying myself. I'm compromising myself. I'm compromising my relationship.

• 3:08:36Speaker 01

  To do what? To go to a staff meeting at a company that the former owner is literally trying to destroy? This is insane. And this is insane.

• 3:08:47Jocko Willink?

  You mentioned moral compass, right? Where did you develop that? Where did that come from? Was it from the Stoics? Was it from your mom and dad? Like, something like, you put a normal 20-year-old freaking kid in this position, and they're going off the rails. Like, there's no turning back. Like, it's gonna get crazy, and it's gonna get real crazy. And they're probably not gonna come back.

• 3:09:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I should have spun off the planet. It was too much temptation, too much access to dysfunctional environment. I don't really know. I mean, I think, yes, I think you credit the Stoics there, that it stopped the slide at a certain point. I don't want to make it sound like I was some choir boy or something. Do you know what I mean? Because I was, I mean, I write about shit that I did that I shouldn't have done. But the Stoic virtues are courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom. And I think, you know, it's very easy to think of Stoicism as this productivity system, which I, and this personal resiliency system, which is what I think I was most excited about, particularly when I was young. It's like, this makes me better. This makes me faster. This makes me stronger. But it's

• 3:09:55Speaker 01

  like, it's not supposed to make you a better sociopath. You know, like, justice is the most important of the virtues, because what is the courage for, right? You know, what are you doing it for? Courage in pursuit of a cause, of the wrong cause, is empty and hollow.

• 3:10:15Jocko Willink?

  Now, I know, I forget which one of your books you say this, but you basically say that there's no eureka moment.

• 3:10:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:10:22Jocko Willink?

  But was there anything close to your eureka moment where you like, you like, looked across the room and you saw something and you're just like, what am I doing here?

• 3:10:30Speaker 01

  There was, there was some, you know, it's funny, I read this book while I was there, this book called The Harder They Fall, by this guy named Bud Schulberg, who wrote On the Waterfront. And great screenwriter, interesting guy. And it's about this corrupt boxing promoter who works with the mob. He's like a publicist. And so I'm reading this and he has this section in there. He's like, I deluded myself. He says that I could deal in filth and not become the thing I touched. And I was like, fuck, you know, I wrote this down. And I wrote this like little essay to myself like this is you. I wrote this all down in the book. And so I remember that as like a pivotal moment, you know, where I, where I

• 3:11:13Speaker 01

  realized I was heading down the road and that I needed to make changes and whatever. And, and that's why it's really important when you hear people's stories that you fact check them a little bit. Right. Cause it's never as clean and immediate as you want it to be. So I remember that being part of what, you know, leads to my departure. So a couple of years ago, I was thinking about this. I told the story or something and so I'm gonna go look when I bought that book. Cause I bought it on Amazon. I pull up when I bought it. I bought it in 2009. I read it in 2009. I left five years later. I stayed for five more years. So knowing something and then acting on it, right? Like knowing what you're meant to do and acting on it. You know, it can take you a long time. You can know in your heart what you're supposed to do or not supposed to do.

• 3:11:57Speaker 01

  But working up the courage to do it is, especially when there's money on the line or status on the line, or just inertia and the status quo on the line. So it took me, it took me a long time. It took me a long time.

• 3:12:11Jocko Willink?

  That, you were talking about the game too, the game that you're playing. It seems like the marketing game must've been fun too, in a fun kind of way, like an immediate gratification kind of way, and like, hey, we pulled this off kind of way. And look, look what we did. There seems like that would be a, a fun kind of thing to do as well.

• 3:12:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, to pull up a newspaper online, see people talking about something that you willed into reality. That like, the sort of puppet master-ness of it, it, it's very exciting. It's very exciting. And then just, just anything that you're good at is exciting. You just have to go, is this, just because you're good at it, doesn't mean it's a good thing to spend your life on.

• 3:12:50Jocko Willink?

  In fact, it might not be the thing to spend your life on. Uh, yeah, you can get wrapped up in that short term gratification. I'm sure that's gotta be, that's gotta feel good.

• 3:13:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then it's scary to walk away and do other stuff, but because I dropped out of college to go like, hey, I am going to walk away from this. I was ready to quit. Like I was like, hey, I quit basically. And they were like, let's keep you on. But I was ready to quit to go write that first book. And so that seemed, that seemed equally crazy to people at that time to at 24, I could have left and gotten a job at any other. I could, I probably could have gone, got a job at a startup that then would have been worth billions of dollars, right? So my options would have been worth like, I had, I had a lot of options.

• 3:13:31Jocko Willink?

  Marketing guy at Uber.

• 3:13:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. I had a lot. I mean, actually, I remember Tim was like, hey, I need you to talk to my friend, Travis. He's starting this, this startup and he needs, he needs some markets. And it's like, so I had, I had all those sort of opportunities, but I knew that wasn't really what I wanted to do.

• 3:13:48Jocko Willink?

  I'm glad you did get involved in that because it sounds like it.

• 3:13:50Speaker 01

  It didn't work out.

• 3:13:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:13:53Jocko Willink?

  Next up was Lives of the Stoics, The Art of Living from Zeno to, is that no, Zeno? Zeno to Marcus Aurelius. This is going to history mode.

• 3:14:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:14:02Jocko Willink?

  And so you're, again, the, writing these books for you, for me, writing books is just what's in my head. It comes out.

• 3:14:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:14:09Jocko Willink?

  It seems so much easier. I'm sorry that you have to write these kind of books, bro.

• 3:14:14Speaker 01

  No, it's what I love.

• 3:14:14Jocko Willink?

  But it's what you did.

• 3:14:16Speaker 01

  I was like, well, who, who were they? Not like what, so the idea of the book is not what did they say, but who were they? And where do they live up to the ideas and where did they fall short of the ideas? Seneca being the most interesting.

• 3:14:30Jocko Willink?

  Why was he the most interesting?

• 3:14:31Speaker 01

  Seneca writes the most beautifully. He was, he was so famous as a playwright in, in Roman times. There's a line from one of his plays as graffiti in Pompeii. So he's like the most famous writer in Rome. And he ends up getting exiled, exiled under these false charges. He spends it in Corsica, where Napoleon is from, which he portrays as this like, speaking of Stoic, you know, Seneca writes of Corsica as being this barren horrible rock in the middle of the ocean. Napoleon, born there, writes about it as this, his place of his childhood, which he always wants to get back to. But anyway, Seneca, he's exiled, there's this horrible thing, and he's called back.

• 3:15:13Speaker 01

  And it's called back by the, the mother of the future emperor. This is Nero's mom. She says, you can come back, but you have to be the tutor and advisor to my son, which he does. He's an ordinary like teenage boy, but it becomes clear with time that Nero, not all is well with Nero, and Nero becomes emperor, and Seneca now is the right-hand man to the most powerful person on earth. And he has this moral quandary of, which I thought a lot of people can relate to, myself included, which is, yes, this person is awful and evil, but I am preventing them from being as awful and evil as they could be, right? Where it is, are you the adult in the room or are you complicit?

• 3:15:58Speaker 01

  And so, he becomes enormously wealthy in working for Nero, he becomes the second richest man in Rome. You just became complicit, Holmes, as far as I'm concerned. Exactly, exactly. You know, this, that's how they get you, right? The gifts that you can't give back. And, and he gets wrapped up in it. And, you know, he writes, Nero tries to murder his own mom, like several times. And Seneca is, I think, complicit in the, one of the worst reigns that he's, so how do you have this incredibly wise, decent man, a component of this horrendous regime? I mean, I think he would justify it in all the same ways that people have ever justified

• 3:16:41Speaker 01

  working for people like that. You know, look at what they would have done to me, look at what they would have done to my family, or you don't want to think about what it would be like if I wasn't there. And so he's this immensely complicated, complex figure that is both the philosopher, but also has these ambitions, this desire that puts him in conflict with his own ideas and ideals.

• 3:17:05Speaker 01

  And then he does break with Nero and he's ultimately implicated in a conspiracy against Nero. And Nero sends his goons to demand Seneca's suicide. And Seneca has this sort of Socrates, Christ-like moment, you know, he does it. But then there's something that is inherently performative about it that hasn't rung right to everyone since, that he was both brilliant and brave and then also some part of it about

• 3:17:39Jocko Willink?

  His showmanship or whatever.

• 3:17:40Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. So he's just, you know, just endlessly fascinating.

• 3:17:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this book right here called About Face, Colonel David Hackworth, he's one of the uprising stars in the army and he just can't take it anymore. And he feels like he's complicit in this war that is being fought in the wrong way and we're not going to win it if we keep fighting it this way. And he ends up speaking out in the press and they drum him out of the army. But this is something that I talk about a lot and it's that exact same thing. Like, you're here, are you the person, like, if he would have stayed in, he would have been the person that could have said, hey, we need to change the way we're fighting this. Now I'm in charge of a brigade, now I'm in charge of a division and now I can help

• 3:18:26Jocko Willink?

  10,000 soldiers do a better job and stay safer. But he just, you know, nope, I'm getting out, I'm going to tell everyone what's going on. And that's a tough decision to make because the moment that you leave, all your power's gone. Is there a chance that there's this huge backlash and people get on board? Who was it? It was the Marine that was with Johnson and McNamara. He writes about the same, yeah. He was like the same way of like.

• 3:19:00Jocko Willink?

  Like, uh, if everyone says I should have done more, but if I would have resigned my position, I would have been in the news for 24 hours and then that would be that.

• 3:19:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's immensely complicated. It's so easy to judge on the outside, but you don't know. But I imagine like General Mattis, who's a hero of mine, who carries Marcus Aurelius with him everywhere he goes. I imagine he was wrestling with the exact same things that Seneca was wrestling with, like, put politics aside, like, personality wise, he must have been, he is as different from the administration he served, as you could imagine. And he has to ask in a sort of who and what to my, do my duties lie? What are my obligations? Right? And then who comes after me? It's so there's, these are incredibly morally complex questions.

• 3:19:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And yeah, who comes after me? And once I'm gone, I'm gone. And even like General Mattis, as immensely popular as he is, I mean, just as a popular human figure.

• 3:19:59Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 3:19:59Jocko Willink?

  General Mattis is one of the most famous kind of modern military humans. And when he left the administration, like, there was a little bit of a buzz, but I mean, they didn't have the big impact, that big of an impact.

• 3:20:14Speaker 01

  And yet the complexity of, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hold my fire till it makes a difference. That's how, that's how, that's how they make you complicit, right? Like, every one of Hitler, it's always fault, it's always problematic when you compare Hitler. But like, everyone knew Hitler was a problem. All of his generals thought he was deranged. And they all hoped someone else would do something about it, right? And, and so nobody did, right? It's this sort of, I call it the tragedy of the commons or a collective, no, call it a collective action problem. Everyone needs to come together and do it. And the sacrifices only matter if, if enough people do it.

• 3:20:59Speaker 01

  But where does that leave you as the individual?

• 3:21:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, where and where does it start?

• 3:21:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:21:03Jocko Willink?

  If there's an, you know, the active shooter, if we all mob the active shooter, we'll get him.

• 3:21:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:21:08Jocko Willink?

  But he's going to get three of us. And so who's going to be the first three that's rolling in?

• 3:21:13Speaker 01

  And and look at American Apparel. I mean, like, I stuck around for much longer than I should have. And there were, there were moments that should have been red line moments. But if I would have left, I wouldn't have also been able to, after they fired him, to make a lot of changes to, to, you know, I wouldn't have been able to. But is that something I tell myself to let myself off the hook? You know, am I not on the hook because I was 23 and I shouldn't have been in the position to begin with? You know, it's, it's complicated, but I think you have to be asking yourselves these questions. And like, I think it was Admiral Rickover, he's quoting Confucius, but he says like, "The obligation of every individual is to act like the fate of the world rests on your shoulders." Which is like, you have to act as if your decision does matter. Like, you have to act on principle.

• 3:21:57Speaker 01

  You can't, if everyone is a pragmatist, then if everyone is, is only going, "Well, I'm only going to do this if it's a, I know it's 100% going to be effective. If I know it will make a difference." I mean, if everyone operated that way, no, no change would ever actually happen. You need, progress depends on the irrational man, they say, right? Like, the person who says, "I'm going to do it. I don't care about the results. It's the right thing to do. I'm going to say it. I'm going to blow the whistle." Blah, blah, like, we cannot function without those individuals.

• 3:22:31Jocko Willink?

  A compare and contrast example I bring up with this is, have you seen the movie Band of Brothers? The series Band of Brothers. Of course, most people have seen it because it's fantastic. But Dick Winters, they're at the end of the war, the war's going to end. And they, he gets ordered by the Colonel, "Take a recon element across the river." And so he goes, "Well, why are we going to do that?" And he says, "'Cause I said so," whatever. So takes a recon element across the river. One guy gets killed, a couple of guys get wounded, they come back. Uh, next night Colonel says, take another recon element across the river. And he's like, sir, I don't think it's a good idea. There's nothing, the war's gonna end, blah, blah, blah. Nope, take a recon element across the river. Roger that, sir. And they go into the basement of a building and they drink wine and they don't go across the river again.

• 3:23:15Jocko Willink?

  And that's an example of where, like, he could have stood up for himself and he would have gotten fired and they would have put somebody else, they would have taken him across the river and put the guys at risk again. That's just a good counter example to the fact that when you draw a line in the sand and you say, nope, I, I refuse to do this, you're then, you don't have any control anymore. And you just gotta be willing to accept that a yes man is gonna be, be put in that position immediately. And there'll be no shelter and no, uh, buffer for the troops.

• 3:23:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, but there is a certain ego and, uh, savior complex in the, like, I'm, I'm the one fishing the papers off the desk. I'm the one countermanding the bad orders. You know, all would be lost without me. That's, that's what bad leaders exploit. That sense of, uh, that's what they need, that, that's what sustains bad regimes and bad leadership, right? So it's a tension.

• 3:24:09Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so you're saying Dick Winters is like perpetuating this bad leader being in position because he doesn't stand up and say, you know what, I refuse to do this.

• 3:24:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, or just the people that go, hey, I'm, I'm preventing them from crashing the car constantly. Well, the car keeps going and eventually it does crash because you're not actually the savior. And you can't actually, like, inevitably, invariably, they're, they're gonna find the thing that sinks them. Right? And are you just letting it go long, online? It's, I, I don't know the answer, but.

• 3:24:43Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, I don't, I don't think it's one of those situations where you can say, here's the right answer. Um, because.

• 3:24:50Jocko Willink?

  You'd have to be able to run both those courses out infinitely to find out where it actually leads. And even when people, when people talk about telling the truth, right? This is a discussion I have in, people say, for example, oh, your wife doesn't cook. You know, my wife, my wife cooks dry chicken, right? This is the big joke. And, uh, well, why don't you tell her? Why don't you tell the truth? Isn't it, wouldn't it be better just to tell her the truth? And so I can tell you that that's not a great option, right? If you tell your wife she spends all day making you chicken and getting, going to the store and buying everything and squaring it away and cooking it. And she overcooks a little bit, so it's a little bit dry.

• 3:25:30Jocko Willink?

  And I can tell you that the right answer is not, it's not going to make things better when you tell her the truth. So what am I saying, lying? And what I've come to discover is that actually, no, you should tell the truth and you should tell the truth to yourself. And the truth that you should tell yourself is that you are very lucky to have this woman that has made you this meal. And you are being a complaining, whining loser for not just being thankful that you have chicken, albeit a little bit dry to eat for dinner, say thank you, because that's what the truth is. You should be thankful.

• 3:26:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:26:04Jocko Willink?

  Tell, aim the weapon of truth at yourself.

• 3:26:07Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 3:26:08Jocko Willink?

  Same thing with radical candor, right? Radical candor like, oh, uh, you know, Ryan, you didn't get this project done on time. Hey, I don't accept that you are failing with your timelines. What I should do is aim that radical candor at myself, which is, hey, have I given Ryan the support that he needs? Have I said, explained to him why this timeline is important? Is he the right person for the job? Did I place him in the job just because I didn't take the effort? So there's a, you, if you aim the truth at yourself, it's going to be a much, it's going to be a much more powerful tool. And it actually will be the best course of action.

• 3:26:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so, so much, I think radical candor and honesty or whatever, this is really just an excuse for being a dick.

• 3:26:47Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 3:26:48Speaker 01

  And that doesn't really help anyone or anything.

• 3:26:50Jocko Willink?

  No, no, that's why if you aim it at yourself, it, it, it doesn't, you won't be a dick. You'll be actually, it'll come across the way it should, which is the truth. The truth about the situation is you're the problem.

• 3:27:02Speaker 01

  Well, whether it's true or not is a separate question from whether this is important or not, whether it's worth talking about or not. Is this the hill you want to die on or not, you know? And that discretion is super important.

• 3:27:15Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. I got a section in Leadership Strategy and Tactics called "Don't Care."

• 3:27:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:27:20Jocko Willink?

  And it's like, well, Ryan wants to do it this way, but I think we should do it this way, and I actually don't care how we're doing it.

• 3:27:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:27:25Jocko Willink?

  Well, you, you said this, and that, no, that's fine, I don't care. Well, like, believe me, I care, but I don't care about these little things that don't matter.

• 3:27:31Speaker 01

  Well, it doesn't, my wife said this to me, too. It's like, what matters? Being right or the relationship? Or is this more important than the relationship? And so often, it's very easy to want to be right, or to want to voice your opinion or whatever, and, and you don't realize that it's, these are Pyrrhic victories.

• 3:27:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And the truth is, the truth is, the relationship is more important.

• 3:27:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:27:52Jocko Willink?

  So why are you talking about something that doesn't? Because the real truth is, the relationship is more important.

• 3:27:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:27:56Jocko Willink?

  Than, than who took out the garbage, right? So, get on with it. Um, next one we're jumping into.

• 3:28:03Speaker 01

  I wrote too many books.

• 3:28:04Jocko Willink?

  You wrote a lot of books.

• 3:28:05Speaker 01

  I had known.

• 3:28:06Jocko Willink?

  I had to make a conscious decision, like, okay, what are we doing? Are we going to do 14 different podcasts? Because I don't know how many books you've got, but you're giving me a run for the money. Um, actually, no, I think you got me beat. I don't know. What's your number? How many books have you written?

• 3:28:18Speaker 01

  I think it's 12 or 13.

• 3:28:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think you got me. There you go. Good job. Uh, speaking of General Mattis, this is from the book Courage is Calling. This is what, 2020? Courage is Calling. What keeps you up at night? General James Mattis was once asked by a television reporter, before the question was quite finished, he, he was already answering, "I keep people awake at night."

• 3:28:43Jocko Willink?

  It was an answer that captured the philosophy by which this warrior and every warrior before and since lives their life. The philosophy of offense, of initiative, of intimidating the enemy rather than being intimidated, of striking fear, striking period, rather than being struck by it. This is why his troops were commanded to set up and sleep in a V-shaped camp at night, a V pointed in the direction of the enemy. It's why he famously cashiered an otherwise excellent officer in the Gulf War for going too slow. To borrow a phrase from the British general Sir Douglas Haig, loser in my opinion, at

• 3:29:26Jocko Willink?

  Mattis's core is the trait that all great soldiers must have, a sincere desire to engage the enemy. He expects nothing less from his troops. What are you going to wait for your opponent to prepare? Are you going to give them an advantage? No way. In a civilian world, we call this initiative. In sports, we call it the will to win. And borrowing from the brutal world of war, we get this expression, killer instinct. It is impossible to have a killer instinct without courage. One presupposes the other, and nobody achieves great things in war, business, sports, life, without either of them. The Spartans never asked how many of the enemy there were, only where. Because they were going to attack anyways. They were in it to win.

• 3:30:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, in my note on General Haig, I actually hate, I loathe all the World War I generals. They're horrible. Even the American ones? Yeah. Some of the Americans were okay. I mean, the Marine Corps went in there and actually were like, hey, hold on a second. This is freaking stupid. But Haig, Butcher, they called him.

• 3:30:34Jocko Willink?

  Just terrible. This carnage and futility and, you know, it's so disgusting to me that he's like, you're quoting here from him as like a sincere desire to engage the enemy. And all he did was like, send 2 million British to their death. Uh, it's just awful. No, never, never said, hey, maybe this is the thing that we're doing. Maybe the way we're doing is not working well.

• 3:30:59Speaker 01

  Well, there, yes, having an offensive mindset and then running into a brick wall are different things. But I think that's what, that's what makes Grant great, right? That's what defines and tips the balance in the Civil War is Grant realizes, oh yeah, if we're on the defensive, we're gonna lose. But we have more men, more manpower, more money, the greatest industrial might in the world. We have to take the war to the enemy. We have to, we have to win. And, and he didn't, you know, all my favorite Grant stories are about that.

• 3:31:32Jocko Willink?

  There's that. We, I did a six-part series on the Civil War. It's called The Civil War Excursion. We owe six more to my friend JD and I. He's a, he's a freaking Civil War maniac. Uh, just the Civil War in general. It's, it's just an incredible thing to contemplate. Going back to the book here, you say, "It's been long held that there are two kinds of courage, physical and moral. Physical courage is a knight riding into battle. It's a firefighter rushing into a burning building. It's an explorer setting out for the Arctic, defying

• 3:32:11Jocko Willink?

  the elements. Moral courage is a whistleblower taking on powerful interests. It's the truth teller who says what no one else will say. It's the entrepreneur going into business for themselves against all odds. The martial courage of the soldier and the mental courage of the scientist. But it doesn't take a philosopher to see that these are actually the same thing. There aren't two kinds of courage. There's only one, the kind where you put your ass on the line. In some cases, literally, perhaps fatally. In other cases, figuratively or financially, courage is risk. It's sacrifice, commitment, perseverance, truth, determination. When you do the thing others cannot or will not do. When you do the thing that people think you shouldn't or can't do. Otherwise, it's not courage. You have to be braving something or someone."

• 3:32:58Jocko Willink?

  Courage is calling.

• 3:33:02Jocko Willink?

  What made this the next of the virtues that you wanted to hit on?

• 3:33:06Speaker 01

  So I'm doing this series, this is still a virtue series. It's courage, discipline, justice and wisdom. And I felt like courage is the most accessible and the most exciting and the most inspiring. So I started, I started there. I know you can't, you can't start with justice. I knew discipline was the one I was most excited, the, the discipline was the one that I felt like I have the, the clearest hook on.

• 3:33:29Jocko Willink?

  I got a lot of texts when people, I guess, it must've been when it actually came out, Discipline is Destiny. I got all kinds of texts like, yo, what's up with this? Some of them were like, oh, this is cool. Some of them were like, yo, he's stealing your stuff. I got a few of those, which I thought was kind of funny.

• 3:33:43Speaker 01

  Well, you, you picked a perfect title. Although I've, why did you call it Discipline Equals Freedom and not Discipline Is Freedom?

• 3:33:50Jocko Willink?

  That's what I originally said. You know, that's what I originally said. I just, that's what I originally said. And I think it's because I don't think they're the same thing. I think that one gives you the other. So this one will give you this. Not it is it, but it'll equal that. So I guess that's why, you know, we did the same thing in Extreme Ownership. So the four laws of combat leadership are cover and move, simple, prioritize and execute and decentralized command. And they're not in the same tense. They, they don't quite fit together.

• 3:34:22Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 3:34:22Jocko Willink?

  Grammatically. And I think our publisher was like, you should change simple to, you know, simplify. And, cause then it's an action that you take. Cover and move is an action that you take. Prioritize and execute is an execute, is an action that you take. And I think they actually had something for decentralized command as well, that would make it a, not a thing, but an action. And Leif and I talked about it. We kind of came to the fact that like, dude, this is what I wrote. Like this is the stuff that I was saying. So let's just stay with what we wrote and you just kind of have to deal with it. So it's the same thing with discipline equals freedom. That's what I originally said. When I was trying to explain to these young SEAL officers, like this is what you need to do. If you have discipline, it's going to equal freedom for you and your physical life, your.

• 3:35:07Jocko Willink?

  Your cognitive life, your platoons, like the more discipline you have, it's going to equal more freedom. That's what I originally said.

• 3:35:14Speaker 01

  I really struggled with the title of that book because it's often rendered by the ancient says temperance. Like that's what the name of the virtue, but I was like, I'm obviously not calling it that. Nobody knows what that means, or if they do know what it means, they think of the temperance movement, which would, which is what banned alcohol in America. So it's like already super unpopular. So I was like, I wasn't going to call it temperance. And then one of the working titles was only the disciplined are free. And then it became, and then I really didn't want to use discipline because I didn't want it to be anywhere near what you did because you're so perfectly titled. So it's going to be called self-discipline is salvation. And then I found salvation for it kind of has this religious connotation, but also it wasn't. Salvation wasn't the right word.

• 3:35:58Speaker 01

  I don't know. I just didn't like it, but like it went as far as like, I saw covers with that title. Like that's how far we went down the thing.

• 3:36:03Jocko Willink?

  Self, self-discipline is salvation.

• 3:36:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what, because and it is important, like you're talking about discipline. Does discipline, you mean self-discipline, but you also mean discipline, like in the military, there is discipline and you enforce it on other people.

• 3:36:16Jocko Willink?

  Well, if you do that, you're not a good leader.

• 3:36:19Speaker 01

  But there is this.

• 3:36:20Jocko Willink?

  There is discipline.

• 3:36:21Speaker 01

  It is a thing, right? Like it, there is discipline in the ranks and they're.

• 3:36:26Jocko Willink?

  Imposed discipline. This is how I eventually had to break this up to explain to people because you know, you do your best you can with your title and you stick with Jocko sticks with discipline equals freedom. And so you get some, some leader out there that goes, cool, I want freedom in my organization. I'm going to impose discipline on everybody. And then you have to go back and say, well, we're not talking about imposed discipline because if you're imposing discipline on people, they're going to reject it. There's all these problems that you're going to have and it won't work out well.

• 3:36:51Speaker 01

  But I did, I was like, it's got to be self-discipline. People need to understand self. So that's where I was going and then it just wasn't working. And then, so there, there's a Greek expression, character is fate, right? Which means like your character determines what you're going to accomplish, who you're going to be, that, that your character, it's deterministic in the sense like if you have bad character, you will eventually do bad things.

• 3:37:11Jocko Willink?

  That's so important to remember.

• 3:37:14Speaker 01

  And so.

• 3:37:14Jocko Willink?

  And it's so unfortunate. Sometimes that takes like three decades.

• 3:37:17Speaker 01

  I know. But and the problem is when people hear fate, they, they don't. Fate doesn't mean what it means to people now. So, so sometimes that quote is rendered as character is destiny, like, character determines who you're gonna be, what you're gonna do. So, it's like, that's, that's what discipline is, right? Discipline, it's both, it determines whether you will be successful or not, but it's also, there's something inherently great about discipline. So, if you go down fighting, you might lose, but if you were dis- there is a form of greatness even in the loss, right? Like, and so, so I ended up, I was like, you know what? Fuck it. Discipline is definitely, it's, it's, it's the right title. I have to stick with it. And, uh, yeah, it was, uh, that was the hardest of them to title.

• 3:38:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, here's a little chunk of that. "Show me a man who isn't a slave," Seneca demanded, pointing out that even a slave, even slave owners were chained to the responsibility of the institution of slavery. "One is a slave to sex, another to money, another to ambition. All are slaves to hope or fear." The first step, he said, was to pull yourself out of the ignorance of your dependency, whatever that happens to be. Then you need to get clean. Get clean from your mistress, from your addiction to work, from your lust for power, whatever. In the modern era, we might be hooked on cigarettes or soda, likes on social media, or watching cable news. It doesn't matter whether it's socially acceptable

• 3:38:41Jocko Willink?

  or not. What matters is whether it's good for you. Eisenhower's habit was killing him, as so many of ours were too, because you, you, in earlier in the book, you talk about Eisenhower quitting smoking. Super disciplined dude his whole life, and yet he was-

• 3:38:54Speaker 01

  He gave himself an order, he said. He's like, I gave myself an order.

• 3:38:57Jocko Willink?

  Um, slowly, imperceptibly. But even if they weren't, even if they were harmless, why should we take orders from our belly or our crotches, or the device that seems almost physically connected to us at this point? The body can't be in charge, neither can the habit. We must be the boss.

• 3:39:19Jocko Willink?

  Gave himself an order to quit smoking.

• 3:39:21Speaker 01

  I love it so much. Forty years, like two packs a day.

• 3:39:24Jocko Willink?

  I had a guy came up to me. Oh, so I I had a guy write in on one of my early podcasts was like, he was a nail biter, like bit his nails, bleeding like in meetings, just like couldn't stop.

• 3:39:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:39:38Jocko Willink?

  And he asked me like what he should do or whatever. And I was like, stop biting him. And then, you know, wrote back like, I stopped biting him like, I'm good, I'm normal. And then I had a guy came up to me at the first muster. This was really cool. A guy came up to me. He, you know, we're hanging out and we're walking to dinner. Actually, he's come up to talk to me. And he says, like, I'm going to tell you something right now that I'm like embarrassed to tell you. And you're going to think it's super lame, but I just want to tell you anyway. So you know what's going on. I was addicted to video games. As weird as that might sound, I would play 12, 14, 18 hours of video games a day. That was my entire life and it was absolutely horrible. And I heard you tell this guy just to stop biting his nails. And he stopped.

• 3:40:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:40:23Jocko Willink?

  And I just stopped playing video games after however many years. And I sold all my video game cartridges or whatever, and I sold my console and I used that money to come here and come to this event with you. And I just want to tell you thanks.

• 3:40:38Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 3:40:39Jocko Willink?

  Just freaking give yourself an order, man.

• 3:40:41Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah. Seneca's other line, he says, no one is fit to rule who is not first master of themselves. And so this idea, I think that's what Eisenhower, what's so powerful about Eisenhower is that

• 3:40:56Speaker 01

  he, he, he was literally the, the most powerful man in the, I mean, just imagine to be the American president at the beginning of the Cold War.

• 3:41:04Jocko Willink?

  After you won World War.

• 3:41:06Speaker 01

  After you won, yes, after you won.

• 3:41:07Jocko Willink?

  You, like you, not America, you.

• 3:41:10Speaker 01

  There will never be a singularly as powerful person again, probably.

• 3:41:15Jocko Willink?

  Isn't it weird that Churchill wasn't?

• 3:41:18Speaker 01

  Right, because Churchill gets knocked out of office.

• 3:41:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know, that's crazy.

• 3:41:20Speaker 01

  And also Eisenhower had nuclear weapons. I don't know if Britain had them yet, right? So you're just, and there's a brief moment where the United States is the only country in the world with nuclear weapons. So singularly, one individual effectively had the power to destroy the earth. And Eisenhower's mother had given him that Bible verse, like, "He that taketh the city is not as great as he that conquers his anger," right? And the idea that if you're master of yourself, that Stoic idea, that's the greatest empire, the Stoics would say. The greatest empire is self-control, self-command. And you realize there's way more people who have been in charge of large armies, or large

• 3:42:05Speaker 01

  empires, or large companies, or large fortunes, or followings. There are more of those people than people who are truly self-contained in self, like, you know what I mean? The discipline of the monk may be stronger than the discipline of, you know, the great conqueror or world leader. And you need that. The Stoics said that, you know, "I think every philosopher, every king should be a philosopher." But he says, "At the outset, every philosopher must be a kingly person." And this idea that like, you need your leaders and you need your thinkers to be in command of themselves.

• 3:42:50Speaker 01

  Because if they're not, what qualifications do they have to tell other people what to do or how to do it?

• 3:42:56Jocko Willink?

  It's so bizarre that people get into these positions when they don't have control over themselves.

• 3:43:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, how'd you think it was?

• 3:43:07Jocko Willink?

  It's just so freaking crazy.

• 3:43:08Speaker 01

  When you go character is fate, how'd you think it was gonna go?

• 3:43:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:43:12Speaker 01

  You know, of course it was gonna end that way.

• 3:43:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I've...

• 3:43:17Jocko Willink?

  One of the guys that I work with now and was in the military with JP Denell. And he had like, when I first met him for the first time, he had like a broken hand, right? Clearly because he cracked somebody and I just, you know, I said, hey, man, like, losing your temper is a weakness. And what was cool was, the reason I remember this because he, he told me, you know, he's like, you said that to me and I was like, oh damn. Because, you know, he's grown up, he sees his dad, his dad loses his temper. This looks like a superpower. Oh, when you lose your temper, everyone listens to you, everyone just does what you said and they get in line and then, and that's the way, that seems like a good superpower that I kind of want to. So boom.

• 3:43:59Jocko Willink?

  Lose your temper, it's a superpower and that's JP. And you know, he's now like, 22 years old or something and he's working with me for the first time. I'm like, losing your temper is a weakness. Never, yeah, never had that idea. Never, never had that idea. And he's like, oh. And he said it just like, oh. You know, again, did that change him overnight? No. Did he get in trouble some more? Yes. Do, do we have to keep him in check a few times? Absolutely. But it was like that beginning of, you know, he was young. I was like, probably 12, something years older than him. But that idea that discipline,

• 3:44:38Jocko Willink?

  emotional discipline, physical discipline, like that is what allows you to be good at making decisions, good at leadership, good at moving through life. Like it just all boils down to discipline.

• 3:44:54Speaker 01

  It's a weird paradox of masculinity that like crying or, you know, being scared and one of these emotions is weakness. But then getting so angry that you punch a wall or you break something, that's like strength. But they're this fundamentally the same thing.

• 3:45:10Jocko Willink?

  It's a baby.

• 3:45:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. I can't handle what I'm feeling right now. And in fact, there's probably actually something, at least the sort of, you know, crying has some kind of emotional vulnerability to it. Like it's almost, I can, I can actually buy that there's something good in that. This is you stuff the sadness down, it comes out, you know? And so this idea that it's about suppression is not the way to think about it either. That's, that's missing what Stoicism is. It's like, I'm feeling something. Is this a good feeling to act on or not? You know, why am I feeling this? How can I process this feeling? Like, that's what we're doing, right? It's, it's having the emotional awareness to go, this is triggering for me. I don't like this.

• 3:45:53Speaker 01

  But it's not appropriate for me to do X, Y, or Z. That's, that's what Stoicism is. Like, it's the maturity and the self-discipline and the self-awareness to not be the victim of those emotions. Like, I think there's a huge difference between being angry and then doing something out of anger. Just as like, being sad is totally fine, or being grief-stricken is totally fine. If five years later, you still can't get out of bed, like, you need to get some help. You know, like that. If, if you're so depressed, you don't want to be alive. You gotta be, you gotta go, you gotta talk to someone about that.

• 3:46:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I went through a whole string on one podcast a long time ago that it may have caused a little bit of backlash. But basically, we were talking about, I was talking about emotions and what, what is a baby? A baby can't control their emotions. They get mad, they get sad, like, that's what happens. And so as you get older, you control your emotions more. Now, there are going to be times where you can't control your emotions. For instance, someone that you care about dies, and now you're getting hit with these waves of emotions. And that's what makes it so scary to grown people. Because for the past 32 years, they've been able to control their emotions. And all of a sudden, their dad dies, and they can't control their emotions, and it's hitting them at these weird times. And so they feel like they can't, they can't get themselves together. They feel like there's something wrong with them.

• 3:47:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:47:17Jocko Willink?

  And what I am happy to be able to tell them is that over time, you will regain control of those, and that will start to dissipate. And those waves of emotion will become weaker over time. And that's not a bad thing, it's actually a good thing, and you're processing it. Never caught any crap about that, but on some other podcast, I was like, oh, you gotta stifle those emotions. And there's like a whole category of emotions that you should freaking stifle. You know, when you get pissed off at your wife because she did take out the garbage or whatever the thing is, and you should stifle those emotions. That's what you need to do. And boy, did I get a bunch of people saying, if you stifle all your emotions, you're gonna like, no, there's a category of emotions that you should stifle. And there's other emotions that are gonna come out. And that's perfectly fine. And in fact, it's healthy.

• 3:47:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course. And, and yeah, if you're, if you're stuffing them down, you're pretending they don't exist. It's just like putting them on a credit card. They're gonna pop out at a different time. But, but if you act on every urge and impulse, if you share every thought that you have, or you, you can't, you allow yourself to be overwhelmed by every temptation or opportunity you have, you're gonna blow up your life and you're gonna, you're gonna hurt other people, you know? So the ability to go, I am feeling this, that's a dumb feeling, or an inappropriate feeling, or the Stoics say, you know, you gotta think about how you're gonna feel the morning after, right? Like, like, drinking is fine on the way down. The problem

• 3:48:40Speaker 01

  is the hangover. And you have to, as you're contemplating an emotion, or a thought, or an action, you have to go, how's this gonna age? You know, how's this gonna age? And, and the ability to go, oh, yeah, like, here's what I feel. I'm right to feel this way. But if I type this all out in an email and I hit send, it's gonna be fucking awkward three days from now and I have to see that person where they're gonna hold this against me forever, right? Or if I quit in a flurry, where does that leave me? And so the ability to, yeah, be in command of, not even command of your emotions, but command of your actions, instead of your emotions being in command of your actions. That's what we're talking about.

• 3:49:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And there's another piece that comes into play. We were talking about truth earlier and like telling the truth. Another thing that you've got to look at is where does the truth end up from a strategic level or a tactical level? So I can tell you the truth in this email that I'm about to send you because you went behind my back on and did something and I can send you, it's the truth right now. And it's gonna make me feel good tactically at this moment to tell you this, but now we don't have a relationship anymore. Now I can't count on you. And I said, the truth is, in a long-term view, this doesn't matter. That's the truth. The truth is, I'm being petty about something. That's what the truth is. The truth, when I aim it at you, is probably not gonna work out

• 3:50:00Jocko Willink?

  well for me. And think of the truth over a strategic timeline, instead of a tactical timeline. People make all kinds of emotional decisions on the tactical timeline, and they're not gonna work out well in a strategic, in a strategic outlook.

• 3:50:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, Lincoln would write these letters, they're called his hot letters. He'd be like, this is everything that's wrong with you, McClellan, you know? And then it would, it would sit in the desk, and he would not mail it, right? And that's really, that's the emotional self-control that we're talking about. He's right to feel everything, and it's good that he felt everything, and it's good that he didn't pretend that he didn't, that he didn't feel it, because it would have vomited all over the next time he saw him. But then he goes, is this what I want to send to my, you know, to my general right now? And where's it gonna leave us? And do I have a replacement yet? And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so the ability to just not take the action on the emotion, no one's asking you to be a saint. Just, just don't do that stuff. You know what I mean? Feel it all. Just don't try not to act on it.

• 3:50:59Jocko Willink?

  Good, good lessons. And speaking of good lessons, eventually, what is this, 2022, you roll into some kids' books.

• 3:51:08Speaker 01

  I did, yeah.

• 3:51:10Jocko Willink?

  I think this is the first book you sent me.

• 3:51:12Speaker 01

  Is it?

• 3:51:12Jocko Willink?

  It's not the copy. I couldn't find the actual copy that you sent me. But, um, yeah, you sent me this book, The Boy Who Would Be King. And then you wrote another one called, The Girl Who Would Be Free. So The Girl Who, so The Boy Who Would Be King is about Marcus Aurelius.

• 3:51:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:51:27Jocko Willink?

  And it's cool, it's really cool, the way that you wrote it. It's basically a lot of Stoicism in these little events, and, you know, lessons being taught to him along the way. Great, simple read for kids to learn lessons. Was this because you had kids?

• 3:51:45Speaker 01

  I did, yes. I wrote it, I wrote it in March of 2020 during the pandemic, where I was like, I'm stuck here. How can I teach my kids about Stoicism knowing that they have zero interest in philosophy whatsoever? And so Marcus really, this story is so incredible. Like you have a boy selected to be the emperor of Rome. And somehow it doesn't end in tragedy and disaster. I just wanted to tell, I wanted to tell that in a sort of an all ages way. And, and, cause I mean, it's, it's really, Marcus's life is a parable of leadership. Like, what does it mean to be selected for greatness? And to prove yourself worthy of it? That's, that's what Marcus's story is.

• 3:52:24Jocko Willink?

  And then what about the girl who would be free? Now is this, what's this story based on? I know in the book, she's a slave.

• 3:52:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:52:33Jocko Willink?

  And becomes free.

• 3:52:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:52:35Jocko Willink?

  Is this an Epictetus?

• 3:52:37Speaker 01

  It's Epictetus. It's, so I wanted to tell Epictetus's story. But I also, I really dislike the idea that Stoicism is just for dudes. So I wanted to tell a female version of the story. And I'm like, Epictetus is dead. And Epictetus isn't a boy's name. Epictetus just means acquired one. So I was like, you know what? I'll just tell, I'll just tell, I'll just render Epictetus as a girl. Which is interesting because Musonius Rufus, who's Epictetus's teacher, writes this essay. You know, right around the turn of the millennium. About how philosophy should be taught for boys and girls. He says virtue doesn't have a gender. He's like, you don't care what sex your horse is or your hunting dog. You just care if they can do the job, right?

• 3:53:21Speaker 01

  And then he says, that's what, what virtue is. It's like the job of a human being. So I just, I just decided to tell Epictetus as a girl. So people who wanted to teach Stoicism to their girl, like seeing yourself in stuff is really important. And so I just didn't want to do another male version. And then some people were really upset about it. It was controversial. It's if it was this sort of gender ideology thing. When really it's just saying like, uh, it doesn't matter if you're a boy or a girl. This is what it is, means to be a good person, to be in command of oneself, which Epictetus's story is so perfect with. Like Marcus has been nerding out about Marcus. He's powerful and rich and has all this accent. But Epictetus is following the same philosophy and has nothing.

• 3:54:05Speaker 01

  You know, as shitty of a life as you can imagine for a person, that's what Epictetus is born into. A slave in the Roman Empire. He, he, he's owned by someone in Nero's court. And he basically looks around one day and goes, I'm freer than all of these people. Because he's in command of himself and they're not. He watches, he watches a man suck up to Nero's cobbler. Like to get access and he goes, my life is way better than that guy's life. And I think this is what ultimately resonates with Stockdale. And Stockdale is introduced to Epictetus in college. He's walking the halls of Stanford.

• 3:54:47Speaker 01

  The Navy sends him to, to Stanford and this fighter pilot who's a professor there goes, have you ever read Epictetus? And he's like, what the fuck are you talking about? And it changes his life. I have a good Epictetus story, you want this one?

• 3:54:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 3:55:00Speaker 01

  Have you interviewed Dave Carey?

• 3:55:02Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 3:55:03Speaker 01

  He, he was a, he's like 80 now, he was one of the POWs with Stockdale. I flew off the Oriskany, shot down a couple of months after, and he told me he's sitting in his cell. And you know, they would tap, tap messages to each other. And the message is like, Stockdale says, um, remember Epictetus's teachings? And he just goes, what are you talking about? Like the idea, the idea that this like 20 year old fighter pilot would be familiar with. Like Stockdale had so steeped himself in the Stillics that.

• 3:55:34Jocko Willink?

  That's like if I was in the prison with him, they'd be like, Jocko, remember Epictetus. Who the hell are you talking about?

• 3:55:40Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. And then he comes to understanding means Epictetus says, in every situation, we have some freedom of choice. Some things that are up to us and some things that are not up to us. And he was saying, focus on what part of this is up to you. Right. Which is the essence of, I think, what Stoic philosophy is and what made Stockdale so great. That's what the Stockdale paradox is.

• 3:56:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:56:01Speaker 01

  And I, but I just love the idea he'd so, that he'd so nerded out about it that he just assumed everyone was familiar with, with an obscure philosopher's sleep from 2000 years ago.

• 3:56:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's one of the, one of the probably best lessons that I've reinforced on myself with this podcast was, um, you know, you know Captain Charlie Plum, another guy that was in, he was in the Hanoi Hilton. And that one of the rules that he told me about. Was if you were in your with your cellmates and your cellmate because they would they would usually have a cellmate for like three months, maybe six months, maybe a year, and then they'd get someone new or they'd get rotated out. And every time a new cellmate would come in, it was like the newest issue of a movie, a new book, and like they just got to learn everything about this person, what their favorite food was, how they grew up. They they would know everything about each other's lives.

• 3:56:58Jocko Willink?

  But also you're living in a cell with some other heat, other human being. And they had a rule. And the rule was if your cellmate does something that annoys you, it's your fault. And to me, that is the ultimate like ownership. You and it's the it's Stoicism very clearly, oh, you know, Ryan is my cellmate. He's above me in the bunk and he's picking his toenails as I'm trying to go to sleep. And it's annoying me, that's my fault. And I need to readjust my thought pattern and be okay and not allow his actions to annoy me. That's on me.

• 3:57:40Speaker 01

  I wonder if that came through Stockdale via Epictetus because one of my favorite quotes from Epictetus, he says, remember when you take offense that you are complicit in being offended.

• 3:57:50Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 3:57:51Speaker 01

  Because they just said it, you chose to see it as mean or directed at you or hurtful like at the essence of Stoicism is this idea that like things are objective. Right. Epictetus says it's just our opinions about them that are not. And so like them picking their toes, it's not annoying. My wife has said this to me, she goes, I can't frustrate you. And that was very frustrating to hear, but but it's true, right? Like they're doing the thing and then I am saying it is frustrating. Right. It is like the frustration is is in me.

• 3:58:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:58:27Speaker 01

  It their thing is that because it's not frustrating to me when I pick my nails. Right. Like when I do it, it's not annoying.

• 3:58:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:58:33Speaker 01

  So because the event is the event is we say, I don't like that. It's gross. What we make up hurtful, politically incorrect, whatever. This is all on us.

• 3:58:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:58:44Speaker 01

  It is what it is.

• 3:58:46Jocko Willink?

  It is all on us in the end.

• 3:58:49Speaker 01

  We should take ownership of it, one might say.

• 3:58:51Jocko Willink?

  It sounds like a brilliant idea.

• 3:58:55Jocko Willink?

  Does this get us up to present time?

• 3:58:56Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 3:58:57Jocko Willink?

  This is where we're at?

• 3:58:58Speaker 01

  I'm finishing Justice Now. I was just working on it this morning when I.

• 3:59:01Jocko Willink?

  When's it coming out?

• 3:59:02Speaker 01

  Twenty four, fall of twenty four.

• 3:59:05Jocko Willink?

  How many, how many hours a day do you write?

• 3:59:08Speaker 01

  Like this morning, thirty minutes. I just, my thing is like, I make a positive contribution every day.

• 3:59:16Jocko Willink?

  I do a thousand words a day and it takes an hour.

• 3:59:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:59:20Jocko Willink?

  And that's not every day, but that's when I'm, when I'm working a book. That's what I'm doing. And I think I could go down to a half an hour a day. I've never thought of just positive contribution. That's a low bar. I like it though. That low bar can really make it easy to, you know, belly up to the computer.

• 3:59:35Speaker 01

  Well, Tim Ferriss told me once, he said, just a couple crappy pages a day.

• 3:59:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:59:39Speaker 01

  And so if you make it, cause like right now I'm actually not writing, I'm more editing and finalizing. I'm definitely, I started a new chapter that wasn't there before. But I think word count can be hard because right now, I actually, it's more important than I'm eliminating words than writing words. So it's just like, did it, did it get better today?

• 3:59:57Jocko Willink?

  The thing that I found that really locks me into this mode is that if you, if you write a thousand, if I write a thousand words today, tomorrow, I can immediately, I can start writing immediately. I don't have to review anything. I know exactly where I left off. If I wait literally one extra day, I have to go back and read. Maybe, you know, the last thousand words I wrote, maybe the last five hundred, but I definitely am going to have to reinvest and reengage my brain and redeploy into this mode. Whereas if it's, if it's from my mind yesterday, and I do the thing that Hemingway did, which was like.

• 4:00:33Speaker 01

  Stop in the middle of a sentence.

• 4:00:33Jocko Willink?

  Stop in the middle of a sentence. I won't quite do that. I'll finish the sentence, but then I'll write like where I'm going in a phrase or three or four words, you know, you know, move towards the building, take it down and whatever, whatever thing I'm going to write next. I'll kind of just know where I'm going. So that way I can get back into it really easily. But yeah, if you take more than a day, for me, I'm just, I have to go back and reengage the whole freaking thing.

• 4:00:59Speaker 01

  What I like to do is so I write in the morning, get it done. And then, you know, I'm working out later or I'm hanging out, going for a walk or swimming or whatever. Ideas pop into my head and I write those down and I don't go back and work on them. Like I wait until the next, like, so you want to be excited about what you have to do for the next, like you want a to do list for tomorrow, not, oh, what do I do today? You know what I mean? Like, so I'm saving it.

• 4:01:24Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 4:01:25Speaker 01

  So you're, you're always like, yeah, ready to go.

• 4:01:28Jocko Willink?

  Getting fired up for it.

• 4:01:29Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 4:01:31Jocko Willink?

  So, uh, so that gets us up to speed though? That's where we're waiting on that one. In the meantime, you've got RyanHoliday.net. It's where people can find you. Also, DailyStoic.com. Both those things have Facebook, Twitter, and the gram, Instagram, at Ryan Holiday, and Daily Stoic, at Daily Stoic. You also have a YouTube channel that's at Daily Stoic as well.

• 4:02:00Speaker 01

  So every day I do, like, so the Daily Stoic, the book is one page a day, but then I just do a free email version every day I have for eight years. And then there's a podcast version of it. So I just, it just kept going. So I do the writing practice every day I have the email. So that's totally free.

• 4:02:15Jocko Willink?

  Do you make a new YouTube every day?

• 4:02:18Speaker 01

  Couple a week, but I don't do like the video version of the email. Like, but, uh, but you can listen to the email or read the email for free. It's one dose of Stoicism every day.

• 4:02:28Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you can listen to the email?

• 4:02:29Speaker 01

  On the pod, that's what the podcast is.

• 4:02:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, check. But you do longer podcasts too.

• 4:02:34Speaker 01

  I do interviews too.

• 4:02:35Jocko Willink?

  Cause you've interviewed me before.

• 4:02:36Speaker 01

  I know, you came on right in the middle of COVID.

• 4:02:39Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, that's right. We were getting after it.

• 4:02:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:02:42Jocko Willink?

  So that's where people can find you. You got freaking eight, 84 books that they can read. You got books for kids, books for adults, calendar books, journal books. You've got, you've got some freaking books, which is outstanding. And I think that gets us up to speed, does it? We good?

• 4:02:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, thanks. This is crazy.

• 4:03:01Jocko Willink?

  Kerry?

• 4:03:02Speaker 02

  Sir?

• 4:03:02Jocko Willink?

  You got any questions?

• 4:03:05Speaker 02

  I do have one question. So we, we talk a lot about open mindedness versus closed mindedness. And I was just trying to figure out, I, I'm a fan of Stoic philosophy and I've followed your stuff for a long time, Ryan. So I'm just curious, is there a kind of a direct corollary to that open mind versus closed mind? Where open minded, you're practicing humility, you're being open to others' ideas. Closed minded, you're kind of using judgment and.

• 4:03:31Jocko Willink?

  Shutting down as opposed to hearing somebody else help.

• 4:03:34Speaker 01

  You might like this Marcus in Meditations, he writes, um, remember, things are not asking to be judged by you. And he says, you always have the power of having no opinion. And I think about that a lot. I think politically, culturally with my kids, like so much of the conflict I had with my parents growing up was them having opinions about shit that just didn't matter. And those conflicts pulled us apart, right? Cause they didn't like my hair or my music or whatever. It's like, you don't need to have an opinion about it. It doesn't matter. And you don't need to have an opinion about 99.9% of the things that are happening in the world, particularly other people's private choices in their private life. And I just see people, they just make themselves so miserable,

• 4:04:19Speaker 01

  but it's, it's worse than that because they make other people miserable too. Do you know what I mean? By having strong opinions about who they should marry, or how they should live, or how they should raise their own kids. It's like, people are not asking you for advice on how to live their life. And it's called, it's called self-discipline for a reason, to go back to where we're starting, like you, they, people did not ask for your standards. You can't hold them accountable for not living up to them, you know, like I, I heard someone say, uh, don't yuck someone else's yum. And I think about that a lot.

• 4:04:54Jocko Willink?

  That's a pretty good one.

• 4:04:54Speaker 01

  You know, people go, that band sucks. Okay. You know, like why, why does it bother me that they like that? But that's hard. It's, it's hard. I'm, I'm trying to get, as in you become a writer because you like having opinions about shit. And, uh, I'm trying to have less opinions about shit.

• 4:05:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that, that open-minded thing, I mean, for me, there's a constant battle of your mind trying to close because it's safer, it's easier. I don't have to listen to you. My ego wants to be closed. My ego doesn't want to hear your opinion. My ego thinks my opinion is better than yours. So we're constantly closing our mind and the goal is to constantly pry that thing open, be open to other people's ideas, be open to other people's perspectives, and it's going to make you a much more, it's going to make you, it's just going to give you a better understanding of what's going on in the world. And a lot of that is driven through humility, obviously, but keep that mind open. Uh, Ryan, any closing thoughts?

• 4:05:51Speaker 01

  No, man, I think I said.

• 4:05:54Speaker 01

  I don't know if I've ever talked this much in my life, except for doing an audiobook.

• 4:05:58Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Well, that's what we're doing. I guess we're setting records.

• 4:06:03Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for joining us, man. Thanks for getting down here. Thanks for sharing your lessons learned, of course. And, and thanks for capturing these lessons for people and getting them out there in a way that they're digestible and accessible to people that need them. It will help them. It'll help them stay on the path of discipline.

• 4:06:24Speaker 01

  Well, it's a total honor for me. I've loved your stuff for a long time since I heard about it from Tim. So this is really cool for me.

• 4:06:29Jocko Willink?

  Right on, man. Appreciate it. And with that, Ryan Holiday has left the building.

• 4:06:39Jocko Willink?

  Kerry, you went a little fanboy at the end there after, you know, after we stopped the mics, you want the picture?

• 4:06:45Speaker 02

  Of course, man. I'm a Ryan Holiday fan.

• 4:06:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:06:48Speaker 02

  And just, you know, Stoic philosophy in general, but Ryan's, he's been pushing this stuff for a long time and.

• 4:06:54Jocko Willink?

  Definitely popularized.

• 4:06:56Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 4:06:57Jocko Willink?

  This in the modern day.

• 4:06:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I picked up Life of the Stoics when it first came out in 22, I think. And I've had Marcus Aurelius meditations for a long time. So.

• 4:07:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Like I said, when, when we were talking, I guess we can cover it. I guess we can cover meditations, but it's like, I might as well just do an audiobook and just read them because they're that self-evident. I mean, they're, they're awesome. So, uh, yeah, we'll think, we'll think about that. But the, the ancient lesson is still being applicable a hundred percent today. And it's, it was cool to, you were saying you hadn't really heard much, many people talk with Ryan about like the whole marketing, American apparel. Like, that's a crazy story.

• 4:07:45Speaker 02

  His story is, is awesome. And that first book he wrote, Trust Me, I'm, I'm Lying. I've, I've never even heard of that book.

• 4:07:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:07:52Speaker 02

  So I'm.

• 4:07:53Jocko Willink?

  It is, it is definitely an interesting book. And it's like he said, you can, you can read it and be like, whoa, I can't believe people would do this. Or you could be like, whoa, I'm gonna do this, you know, if you're nefarious way of doing it. So definitely some stuff to.

• 4:08:06Speaker 02

  Or just be aware, aware of what's actually happening out there, you know, where like, oh, this, this is a manufactured story that was then leaked to get more press on and then push it, you know, particular.

• 4:08:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so let me give you an example of some of the stuff in that book. They got a book coming out. They want to make it, they want press for the book, so they put up billboards and vandalize the billboards themselves. So it gets reported that the billboards were vandalized. Right. You know what I'm saying? Like, like, that's a good move. That's some chestnut checkers marketing. Yeah, that's some chestnut checkers marketing. So those are the kind of things that are in that book was very, very interesting. So cool, pretty cool to talk to him and hear about all the stuff he's been going on. And just like I said, it's, it's pretty impressive that he went through that time period of being the kind of it kid.

• 4:08:59Jocko Willink?

  And money and all the other stuff that was thrown into his face. And he was able to steer clear of that sort of demonic downfall spiral that people can get on to, which a lot of people get. You go to Hollywood, like they're in LA with money and action. And go look at those advertisements. You can pull them up. They have whole websites that are dedicated to the, the advertisements for American Apparel. You can see it's a very.

• 4:09:28Jocko Willink?

  And like I said, I didn't know about it at the time because I was just so detached from like fashion. But when you look at it, you can see why, why it went rector and why it was doing so well. Cause it's cool looking stuff, you know, cool looking advertisements. But very cool conversation. Glad to have him on here. So thanks once again to Ryan for coming out. What do we got going on? We got Choco Live, by the way. So we, we, look, we sold out in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We just got done, but done with that in Chi Town. We were sold out there. What was your, what was your, you were there, both shows. What was your assessment? Powerful. I'll say that. Yeah, they were, it, it was awesome. It was awesome to be out there. We are going to be, we got two more shows. We got one in Boston.

• 4:10:13Jocko Willink?

  The Boston, when I looked at the chart, there's might be like, I don't, there's not many seats left in Boston, if any. Honestly, I think Boston sold out and Philly, Philly's, so Boston, July 21st, Philly's July 22nd. There's still some seats left in Philly. It's a, it's a bigger venue, but there's like a handful of seats in Philly. So if you want to come, uh, and, and listen, it's, I'm going to meet you. Like if you want to come and say hi, I, I will stay there until we shake hands. So Bring your books. Bring your books. Damn it. I shouldn't have said that. There's, I'll, I sign a shit ton of books. I'll sign your books. Um, just because, look, I, I'm, I'm a normal person, you know?

• 4:10:56Jocko Willink?

  I'm not, I'm not in the green room. I'm not hiding. I've got freaking nine security guards standing in front of me, uh, to get me whisk me out of there when it's over. No, I'm like, you're my friend and you want to come hang out, come and get it. I'll be there. We'll hang out and I'll, I'll definitely meet you, shake hands. You want me to sign your book? Let, let, yep, bring it. Let's do it. So, once again, next up is Boston, July 21st, Philly, July 22nd. Come and get it, man. Look forward to seeing you there. And, uh, I will be hyped up on a little something called Jocko Fuel when I'm there. It's weird because I love,

• 4:11:40Jocko Willink?

  I love go, my own energy drink, right? I love it. I love the taste of it. I like, love the way that makes me feel, but I, you know, I have to put a governor on myself, right? I can't drink nine of those things in a day. I would, but you can't, right? But at that, I'll drink like, in the matter of two hours, I'll put down three because I've just cleared hot, you know? And it's just awesome. So Jocko Fuel, this, the, the Jocko lives are fueled by Jocko Fuel. Hundred percent. So, so come and get some of that. Uh, you can get it at jacofuel.com. You can get the, the protein powder. This is another thing, a protein powder. You, you know, you're traveling, throw some, throw some of that protein powder in your bag. You're good to go. You don't have

• 4:12:22Jocko Willink?

  to eat that crap in the airport. You've got the mulk with you. Get some of that. The ready to drink stuff is going Richter. I don't know if, I haven't told you that, but like the, the ready to drink stuff. It's just going, the protein, Molk Protein Shakes are going Richter, wherever they are. People are consuming them at an incredible rate. Thirty grams of protein, just freaking tasty as can be.

• 4:12:47Jocko Willink?

  So, check that out.

• 4:12:50Jocko Willink?

  We got this stuff available at the Vitamin Shoppe. It's at Wawa. Look, you can get the drinks at Wawa. You gotta look at the bottom right corner, because they're trying to, you know, the big companies are trying to do their thing to us. They're trying to push us out. They see a threat. They know what's up. But we're there. Wawa, Vitamin Shoppe, GNC, the Military Commissaries, Commissaries, AFEES, we're in AFEES now, Hanaford Dash Stores, Wakefern Shop Right, HEB. Everyone in Texas, thank you. Meyer, I was just up in Meyer Country in Michigan. Everyone that's up there, thank you, because you, you, you all are getting in there and clearing shelves in Texas and, and at Meyer, at HEB, and Meyer. Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, we're in there, we're at Shields.

• 4:13:31Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, we're in little gyms and little places also where we just went heavy into Tennessee. We're in all kinds of stores in Tennessee. If you're in Tennessee, go into like your local convenience store and see what's up. If you want to sell in your CrossFit gym, if you want to sell in your Jiu Jitsu studio, email [email protected]. Get, get it in there. Take care of your people. Take care of your clients. Get them in better shape. That's what we're doing. Uh, that's chocofuel.com. We got it going on. Also, we got Origin USA. You heard us talking about, you heard us talking about the apparel thing. You heard us talking about, uh, other companies making a T-shirt for 40 cents. And who is getting exploited in order to do that?

• 4:14:16Jocko Willink?

  Someone is getting exploited when that happens. When you can buy something, when you can buy a T-shirt for $7, someone's getting exploited.

• 4:14:27Jocko Willink?

  And it's, and it's, and it's national security is being exploited as well. And the environment is being exploited. It's just destructive. So don't, don't buy into it. Go to originusa.com and get yourself something that's made in America. That's what we're doing. T-shirts, boots, jeans, gees for that jiu-jitsu boha. Rash guards. We got the whole RTX line, which is roll, train, execute. That's what it is. You can do whatever you gotta do. And we also have hunt gear. So look, we got it going on and we're making it all in America. We are taking care of our workers. We are taking care of national security. We're taking care of our supply chain. We're taking care of the farmers that grow this stuff.

• 4:15:08Jocko Willink?

  And we're taking care of you because we're making you the best possible product. Originusa.com. Go get it. That's what I'm saying.

• 4:15:15Speaker 02

  We also got jocko store.com.

• 4:15:17Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 4:15:19Speaker 02

  Where you can get your podcast, Discipline Equals Freedom gear.

• 4:15:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:15:23Speaker 02

  You can get your, uh, stay on the path gear.

• 4:15:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:15:26Speaker 02

  T-shirts, trucker hats, beanies, hoodies.

• 4:15:28Jocko Willink?

  The way Echo Charles says this is you can represent while you're on the path.

• 4:15:34Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 4:15:35Jocko Willink?

  And this is what was cool. At the lives, people were represented on the path.

• 4:15:39Speaker 02

  Hard.

• 4:15:39Jocko Willink?

  It was freaking legit. So that was awesome to see everyone showing up, representing.

• 4:15:44Speaker 02

  Representing that shirt locker.

• 4:15:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that shirt locker. Just, it's just awesome. So thanks for this shirt locker is a subscription t-shirt. Make new t-shirts all the time, like new designs. Some of it a little edgy, little bit risky, little bit layers. There's layers on all of them for sure.

• 4:16:01Speaker 02

  One of the questions at the Jocko live was about a shirt locker shirt. The, uh.

• 4:16:06Jocko Willink?

  Everybody must get stoned. Yep. Yep. They asked about the t-shirt. So there's layers there.

• 4:16:11Speaker 02

  Layers.

• 4:16:11Jocko Willink?

  Layers are always worthwhile. Uh, jocko store.com. Also subscribe to this podcast. Also subscribe to Jocko Underground. Also subscribe to the YouTube channel for, for Jocko Podcast and Origin USA and Jocko Fuel. We got YouTube channels for all those. Check those out, subscribe to them. Click subscribe.

• 4:16:32Jocko Willink?

  Smash the like and subscribe button. Uh, flip side canvas Dakota Myers making awesome stuff to hang on your wall. Books, we got a ton of books, freaking Ryan. Ryan Holiday writing books like a boss dude, just, just turning them out. So check out all his books. He's got, he's got, I think he said 13 of them. Pretty ridiculous, but they're all, they're all freaking good to go. So check those out. And then of course I've written a bunch of books as well. I guess I need to get busy if I want to go and freaking trump old Ryan Holiday. Because I don't like getting beat because my ego's in the way. But a bunch of books, man, reading as I, as we were talking about. Reading's how you learn. You can learn from other people's experiences. You can refresh your memory. You can be detached.

• 4:17:16Jocko Willink?

  You can do assessments, like all these things are through reading. So get yourself some books. We also have Echelon Front. It's our leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for details. Uh, we have

• 4:17:32Jocko Willink?

  August 8th through the 10th, I think we got a couple of spots open for the Little Big Horn Battlefield Review. Come and check that out. We got it. We got it. FTX, like back to back FTX has taken place in Texas. When's that? September, I think. We got in October, then is the next muster, October 18th through the 20th. Listen, we sell out of everything. So if you want to come, please just go register. We also have the Women's Assembly. That's September 14th through 16th. Jamie Cochran, the COO at Echelon Front. And an incredible leader in her own right. She is running that event for women. So you can check that as well. We also have the Extreme Ownership Academy.

• 4:18:17Jocko Willink?

  Where all these little lessons that give you the skills to make better decisions, to maneuver properly, to build good relationships. All these things that make up life itself.

• 4:18:33Jocko Willink?

  Relationships, decision-making, these are things that make up life itself. And if you're good at them, if you're good at decision-making, if you're good at building relationships, if you're good at discipline. If you're good at these things, you will be good at life.

• 4:18:50Jocko Willink?

  So check out Extreme Ownership Academy. It's at extremeownership.com. We got free courses on that, on there that you can take. There's, listen, go take some of those free courses, if nothing else. If, look, if you're broke right now and you can't afford to pay for some of the courses, that's fine. Go and take the free courses. The value in the free courses, you will benefit from immensely. You'll benefit with your family. You'll benefit with your business. You'll benefit in life. So get in there. It's free. Get in there. Get in there. It's, it's, it's gold. We're giving away gold. If I could have had these lessons when I was 23 years old, or 27 years old, or 32 years old, my whole life would be better. I had to

• 4:19:35Jocko Willink?

  learn them the hard way. Now I want you to have them the easy way. Go to extremeownership.com. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. She helps so many veterans get into a better place in life through the therapies that she offers and pays for. So go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org if you want to help out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. Just an amazing woman. And also, don't forget about Micah Fink. Latest report

• 4:20:13Jocko Willink?

  is that he just fought off two grizzly bears with a pocket knife and a twig. And he came out on top. That's Micah Fink. He's got, he's got folks up in the field right now. He is taking veterans into the field where they can get lost and then get found. Incredible program that he's running. Heroesandhorses.org. And if you want to connect with us on the interwebs, RyanHoliday.net, also Facebook, Twitter, and the Gram, at RyanHoliday. DailyStoic.com, Facebook, Twitter, the Gram, and the YouTube channel, at Daily Stoic. And of course, Kerry

• 4:20:53Jocko Willink?

  is at Kerry Hilton. Kerry underscore Hilton. Guess what? He missed the boat. He missed the boat. We had to throw that underscore in there. Too slow. Too slow. Too slow. Underscore. Have you tried to get that? You tried to get that Kerry Hilton? Yes, sir. No, nothing? Nothing. Just didn't respond, nothing? No response, zero movement. Is Kerry Helton active? No. So it's just somebody just sitting on it? Somebody parked it. Somebody parked it. I got some connections. Let's see what's up.

• 4:21:26Jocko Willink?

  Let's go. Let's go. And I am at Jocko Willink. Of course, of course, please, please, please just watch your back because the algorithm sneak up on you, put you in a chokehold, you'll wake up and you wasted 48 minutes of time. So just be careful. That's the algorithm. And of course, thanks to all our military folks on watch around the globe right now, protecting us and our way of life. Thank you for what you do every single day. And of course, the same goes to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all you first responders. You sacrifice to keep us safe here at home and we thank you for that. And everyone else out there.

• 4:22:12Jocko Willink?

  From Marcus Aurelius, warrior, emperor, stoic. "We should discipline ourselves in small things and from these progress to things of greater value." As we say on the podcast here, unmitigated daily discipline in all things. Also from Marcus Aurelius, "Stop allowing your mind to be a slave, to be jerked about by selfish impulses." What does that mean? Do what you're supposed to do.

• 4:22:49Jocko Willink?

  And finally, from Epictetus. "Freedom isn't secured by filling up on your heart's desire, but by removing your heart's desire." Or, as we like to say, "Discipline equals freedom." And that's what we've got. Until next time, this is Kerry and Jocko.